Omega Division - HUTA
by Heller Himura
Summary: They are the few, the chosen, the proud, and the most annoying secret society in the known galaxy. What they can't take by force of arms, they'll win by yelling at it. A lot.


Omega: The Dominion War

by Bubblicious

  
  


***

"I am in a world of shit. But I am alive. And I am thankful for that."

Private Joker, Full Metal Jacket

  
  


"What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?"

Matthew, 18.12

***

  
  


2294

  
  


The Klingons and Romulans were glaring at each other again.

That was only to be expected. It hadn't been a year ago that the Romulan government had conspired with rogue officers in StarFleet and the Klingon Defense Force to kill Chancellor Gorkon, leader of the Klingon High Council. Those same officers had also conspired to kill the Federation president, but they'd botched the job, and botched it quite spectacularly. Had they succeeded, it would have sent the Federation and the Klingon Empire spiralling headlong into war, while the Romulans would have gotten to sit back and watch their two greatest adversaries pound each other to a pulp.

And then swoop in and invade and occupy both. Very nice, very bloody arrangement.

The Federation's military delegation, led by Fleet Admiral Celine, had been just as edgy around the Romulans, and they sure as hell didn't trust the Klingons, but they were somewhat more subtle about it.

Now, Fleet Admiral Varnak, from the Romulan delegation, was ranting on and on about some tiny nuance he didn't particularly care for. Fleet Admiral Ch'Pok, from the Klingon delegation, looked about ready to reach over and rip Varnak's ears right off of his head. "We have been over this before, Admiral." The Klingon growled, leaning forward in his chair and clenching his fist, the leather of his uniform creaking quietly. "All that section states is that, in times of war, any member of this new organization may leave that organization and re-enlist in their own military -"

"Indeed." Varnak drawled, so pleasantly that Celine's lunch threatened to back up on him. "And what is to stop a, say, human member of this organization from tempting a Romulan member to defect during that same time of war?"

Ch'Pok, growling, rolled his eyes. "And what's to stop a Romulan from tempting a Klingon officer to defect? You do it so often -"

"I object to that inflection, Admiral."

"So?"

The two men went at it for long minutes, throwing insult upon insult, accusation upon accusation at each other.

" - and your own secret agreement with the Organians, in violation of..." "...your assault on the colony of..." "Dishonorable YiN'tagh..." "...sticks and -"

Varnak didn't even get the taunt out before Celine's fist hit the desk hard enough to make his fist really hurt. A spider-web of cracks erupted from the hit, shattering the crystalline beauty of the table. "That's it!" He thundered, erupting to his feet, sending his chair clattering to the ground. He glowered at the two Admirals, eyes narrowed to impatient slits. "Gentlemen, we can go around and around about what we think the other governments here have done and is going to do, and it'll take us back seventy damned years before we're done."

He straightened, tugged on his uniform jacket bluntly. "Damnit, you've all read the reports submitted by our own ships. An unknown ship, identifying itself as an Infernal scout, roughly the size of a a B'rel-class bird of prey, destroyed two Romulan warbirds, one of the Federation's newest Excelsior-class cruisers, three Klingon destroyers, and a Shelliak worldship." He snarled, slapping his hands to the table and leaning forward, fixing them with his best glower. "A dreadnought-class ship. Obliterated a veritable fleet of the most advanced destroyers, cruisers and picket runners we've ever conceived. It was only thanks to the quick thinking of the Excelsior and K'tang that this ship was suckered into a black hole, and even then, the K'tang had to ram the damned thing to shove it in!" He snorted. "You want to run into an Infernal destroyer, caught with your pants down, gentlemen?"

Varnak and Ch'pok sullenly sat down. Celine straightened again, gave his jacket another tug, and sat. "The Federation is fully willing to risk what is needed to win the upcoming war - and gentlemen, we all know it's coming."

Varnak and Ch'pok gave each other a final glare before, with a sigh, Varnak looked over at Celine, eyes slitted dangerously. "The Romulan military...removes its objection."

Celine smiled amicably, spreading his hands. "Then, by all means, gentlemen...let's continue. Now, the matter of raw materielle supplied by each signature government is outlined in section 23-5." He looked up, arching an eyebrow. "I take it we can all agree to equal amounts of personnel and equipment from all signature races..?" Nods all around. "Excellent. We'll handle exact amounts at a later time." He looked around the table again, before inhaling deeply and bracing himself.

"Now...about the Omega Particle..."

And then another round of arguments and shouts erupted from around the table.

  
  


Omega.

Imagine for a moment, immeasurable power, with no waste products of any kind. The ultimate energy source for...what? Planetary electricity, weather control, starship power...a weapon, even.

The source of this immeasurable power is the Omega Particle. The most sought after, the most dangerous artificial - and possibly natural - substance on the charts. The Omega Particle, if harnessed, could be used for incalculable good. The problem is, it has the nasty habit of, if improperly stabilized, shattering subspace for a good, long ways in all directions. 

It happened to StarFleet, it happened to the Breen, and it happened to the Dominion. All came to the realization that these particles were simply too dangerous to the existence of subspace - that the Omega Particle was just one of those things we mortals were not meant to dick around with just now.

So...where does that leave us? There are thousands of warp-capable species out there, and the UFP can't possibly get them all to join.

Enter Omega Division. Our motto is some Latin gibberish that no one gives a rat's ass about. Something about defecating where the gods fear to tread, but that never made much sense to me - to be honest, I think Fleet Admiral Celine had tipped back just a little too much Romulan ale when he conceived of it.

What we are is a collection of the major governments of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta quadrants, all dedicated to a lasting peace, all demanding of that simple, yet laughable goal - destroy Omega Particle.

We have the equipment, and we're self-sustaining. It's gotten to the point where only two or three people in our own governments even know we exist. Which is just fine, if you ask me. We only recruit from the militaries anyway.

Obviously, we don't just do this Omega Particle nonsense. That wouldn't justify the sheer amount of manpower and equipment invested in this project.

We are the self-proclaimed guardians of the galaxy. Very few people actually know it, but there is a war going on right now. The Borg are a part of it, to be truthful, but a very minor part. The Hirogen, what with our limited dealings with them, are also a part of it.

There is something out there, beyond the Galactic Barrier. Something sinister, existing on planes of existence all throughout the multiverse. Our own brief contacts with the Q and M continuums have yielded...limited results. So far, all we have is a name; 'The Infernal.'

5th Fleet, Omega Division, operates under the flag of Admiral Kestra Troi. We are the only Omega Fleet specially outfitted for three purposes; to battle the Borg, the Infernal, and the Omega Particle. All other fleets are engaged constantly with Infernal forces.

Which, needless to say, sucks.

  
  


2374

  
  


The Omega Division Destroyer Hatshepsut limped through space, moving at a passable clip of three-quarters impulse. Her jet-black-painted exterior was streaked with scorch marks, and a hole had been opened up in her starboard wing, breaching more than five decks. Her port nacelle was leaking gas, and her running lights were flickering on and off randomly.

Beside her, the ODE Roanoke moved along, barely under it's own power. Its running lights, too, were flickering sporadically, it's black exterior barely visible against space. The ODE Prang flanked the Roanoke, keeping pace with her.

The ODC Kevor was being towed by the ODC Bemor while the ODD Mockingbird watched over the both of them.

Four wings of four Peregrine-class strike-craft moved among the limping fleet, forming and scattering, moving back and forth as they scouted the perimeters for approaching hostiles.

  
  


Captain Sish Baakani, one of a very few Icthians who had ever served in StarFleet, and the first in the Division, sat on the bridge of the ODD Mockingbird, staring at the image on his viewscreen, watching the Breen Sathanas-class destroyer, the two Galor-class cruisers, the Defiant-class escort, and the K'Vort-class cruiser flanking it. He was leaning forward, fingers steepled before his face.

They'd damn near gotten their asses kicked by the Infernal destroyer group. Twelve wings of fighters, three destroyers, and six cruisers of varying class. Against the Hatshepsut, the Thoth, the Mockingbird and their assault wings. The Mockingbird's assault wing had taken the heaviest beating; the V'ret, Pragg and Z'frang, all K'Vort-class cruisers, had been destroyed. The Sumner, one of three Akiras under the Mockingbird's flag, had rammed the last Infernal destroyer as it had attempted to escape through its own subspace conduit, breaching both warp cores and completely collapsing the conduit. And that was just the losses under the Mockingbird's flag.

Five-hundred on the Sumner. Almost four-hundred fifty on the K'Vorts. Seventy dead on the Hatshepsut, twenty on the Mockingbird. All the wounded from the Kevor, Bemor, and Roanoke had been split between the Mockingbird and Hatshepsut. The Prang was taking care of their own.

The Thoth had been called away halfway to 5th Fleet HQ, sent to relieve the Baraka from it's patrol in sector 120-F. She'd 'borrowed' the Mockingbird's and Hatshepsut's battle groups, incorporating them into her own and deploying them all over sector 120-F.

"Sir..." Lieutenant Commander Tekeny Remmen, a Cardassian who'd transferred to the Division years ago, spoke up from her station at tactical. "We're approaching the outer station marker."

Sish nodded, not bothering to move to look at her. "Signal Omega Five that we're coming in, and request immediate repair and medical teams."

Remmen nodded, bending to her task, her fingers moving gracefully over the keys. "Omega Station Five, this is the ODD Mockingbird, en route with ODD Hatshepsut and her battle group. Authorization code Sierra-Kappa-Six. Request repair and medical teams meet us upon docking."

"Roger, Mockingbird. Authorization codes acknowledged and accepted. Repair and medical crews deployed. Welcome back." The response came back crisply in the form of a cool, measured female voice.

"Understood. Our ETA is seven minutes, thirty-three seconds. Mockingbird out." Remmen closed the channel before leaning over her station, resting her hands on the upper portion and leaning tiredly. "OS-5 has been informed, sir."

Sish nodded imperceptibly. He was engrossed in the fleet he was bringing up the rear for. The Roanoke was still having trouble with it's running lights. He'd dispatched what repair teams he could spare to the ships that needed it, even though half the systems on the Mockingbird were themselves damaged.

Finally, Sish snarled under his breath. "Goddam Infies..."

  
  


***

  
  


"Ow! Grozit!" Chief Engineer Lt. Cdr. Priscilla Gray, a human from Alpha Centauri, swore as she straightened, rubbing the back of her head and kicking the hatch of the jeffries tube she'd crawled out of - and banged her head on the roof of - closed. She looked up at the second engineering deck, up at her chief assistant, a Romulan by the name of Tavak, and yelled at him. "Alright, try the piece of crap now!"

Tavak grumbled unhappily over his console. He was one of the newer conscripts into the Division, one of the replacements sent by the Tal Shiar after the Grevan and its battle group had been ambushed by a Borg wing. As such, he was still not entirely used to the instrumentation used by the various Division forces. He tacked several keys before looking up at the display at eye-level and frowning slightly. He shook his head and turned to yell down at Gray. "Still nothing! The deuterium regulators are still locked!"

Gray swore again, kicking the wall with the flat of her foot. "Damnit! Shit! Alright, recalibrate the whole system!"

Tavak blanched visibly, but nodded and bent to his task.

A crewman, uniform smeared and face darkened slightly, ran up to Gray and leaned against the wall. "Sir..." She panted, straightening gradually. "We got the tractor emitters back on-line, but we're still having a bitch of a time straightening out the aft torpedo guidance controls. The damn things are frozen. And we're getting reports from deck fifteen that the gravity stabilization field is shot to hell."

Gray rolled her eyes to the ceiling, muttering. "Goddam Infies..."

  
  


***

  
  


Chief Medical Officer Lieutenant Nikolai Brand had a look of utter consternation on his face. His forehead was beaded with sweat as he placed a tissue mitigator back on the tray the nurse provided. The Roanoke's surgeon, a fairly diminutive but incredibly intense Breen woman by the name of Vass, was moving rapidly, the o-so-pointless Breen refrigeration suit discarded in favor of surgical scrubs. She worked hurriedly to remove a forming blood clot in their patient's lungs.

Brand checked the surgical scanner at the head of the operation table, frowning slightly. "It looks like the nanites have reached her stomach and large intestine." He announced sullenly, eyes taking on a sunken look.

The opposing surgeon spared him a brief look out of the tops of her eyes before she went back to running the autosuture over the woman's chest, stitching the skin back together by speeding up the natural repair systems. "Can she handle a system flush yet?"

Brand frowned, checking the medical scanner again. "Her breathing's starting to regulate again. Heartrate's returning to normal...I think she can handle it." He looked down at the Klingon woman on the bed, frowning. "Too bad the brak'lul doesn't cover immune systems..."

Vass turned to the nurse. "Replicate ten liters of Klingon blood."

"Yes, doctor." The nurse responded vapidly, hurrying off to her task.

Brand shook his head, ducking his forehead down to wipe off the sweat beaded on his forehead onto his shoulder. "Any sign of residual bleeding?"

Vass shook her head, wrinkling her nose and curling her upper lip. "No. We got it all. But if those nanites eat through her stomach lining, then we'll have to go back i-"

A sudden shrill beeping from the surgical table wrenched their attention to the scanner. Both of the surgeons' mouths fell open in utter shock at what the computer showed them. "What the fu -" Vass all but shouted, looking from the Klingon on the bed to the scanner. "How did the nanites get back to her respiratory system so fast?!"

"It doesn't matter, dammit, they did!" He swore loudly, hunching over the bed and placing his hands just above the woman's solar plexus. He started CPR quickly, counting to himself while Vass snatched a hypospray off the tray and loaded it with hyperzine. 

Vass slapped the hypospray against the woman's neck, watching the display the whole time. She shook her head, holding up the hypospray and upping the dosage slightly. She hit it to the woman's neck again, yelling and watching the medical display at the same time. "Nurse, we need that plasma!" She shook her head, looking up at Brand. "We'll have to remove one of her lungs and clone a new one..." She snarled in frustration, looking down at the patient's face.

Brand shook his head, reaching over and quickly pulling a pair of cortical stimulators off the table and slapping them on the woman's forehead. 

Vass snarled angrily, taking up the CPR while Brand charged the unit. "Goddam Infies..."

  
  


***

  
  


The halls of Omega Station Five were hollow. They were crowded, to be sure, with personnel scurrying about on their various assigned duties, but they simply felt...hollow. Empty of purpose. Heavy with a sense of...something. Loss, maybe?

Sish shrugged his shoulders, as if trying to roll the anger and frustration off with the gesture. But the reminder that seven-hundred fifty of the men and women under his command had been killed was still there. And he didn't even know how the Thoth was faring, off in sector 120-F.

He walked sullenly, eyes directed slightly downward, at the carpet about ten feet ahead of him, hands clasped behind him. He stopped before a door at the end of a hall, as nondescript and inoffensive as could be. It was marked appropriate for the stature of the person who held this office, and it made his stomach fall out from under him. He wanted to turn, to run the other direction, hide in a corner, under his bunk, in the reclimator, anywhere but here. He touched the key for the door chime anyway.

"Come in." A muffled voice grumbled through the door. The doors swished open as Sish moved through. He arched an eyeridge at the sheer amount of clutter that had accumulated in the Admiral's office since last he'd been here.

"Captain Baakani, Admiral, reporting as ordered." He announced tiredly, watching the chair that faced away from him. That chair turned, and Fleet Admiral Kestra Troi gestured silently at the seat opposite her. Sish sat easily, examining the clone who sat before him.

Kestra Troi was a clone, a product of refined Federation cloning techniques - supposedly banned and made illegal long ago. She was cloned from the DNA of a human-betazoid child who'd drowned years back, on Betazed. However, her family had been close friends with Admiral Benjamin York; the Division's plant in StarFleet's 7th Fleet back then. The story had it that he'd been a close friend of the Troi family, had known Kestra, and had smuggled a sample of her DNA on file to Division scientists in the Delta Serpentis sector. He'd called in favors there, and had the sample used for the first in a series of tests for stable genetic cloning matrices - no genetic drift.

The product sat before him. She was incredibly bright, incredibly talented, and incredibly smart. A brilliant tactician in military operations ranging from fleet deployments to small unit tactics. She knew what her weaknesses were, and surrounded herself with people who excelled where she failed. And she could throw a full-grown Klingon a good five feet when really annoyed. She had odd pigmentations of the eyes, skin, and hair. Her hair was a shock white, her skin pitch black, and her eyes a piercing red - all products of her cloning. The trade-off for no genetic drift, apparently.

"I've...read your after-action report, and those of the other commanders. Captain Kej'ar agrees with your assessment that the Infernal are planning an offensive in the Gamma Aquilae sector." Kestra tossed the report on her desk, the padd clattering amidst the others.

Sish nodded. "Activity out in sector 271-G has been heating up. That's a bit too close to the Remus-Bremor shipping lanes for my comfort. The Romulan military's going to start sniffing around out there if this keeps up."

Kestra snorted. "You're getting to something."

"The Infernal might be using a staging point near Treank space. The 2nd Fleet's operating out there, on maneuvers. Their advance wing should deploy in the Treank sector and scout the outlying terrain."

Kestra arched an eyebrow tiredly, leaning forward and crossing her arms on the desk. "Are you sure? If they get caught out of position when the Infies press the offensive..."

Sish shook his head, gesturing to the display on the wall. "The Hatshepsut, Thoth and their battle groups can deploy to reinforce their position."

Kestra thought it over for a moment, before nodding. "Agreed. I'll reassign the Hegh'Pa as your wing until then. How are repairs coming on the ships you brought in?"

Sish scraped his knuckles over his cranial plates, frowning slightly. "It's...tricky. The Hatshepsut's entire regeneration grid was decimated in the attack, and the Kevor lost two of their emergency repair teams. The Hatshepsut will be down for a week, at the least. The Kevor'll be back up in three days, if you believe the reports."

Kestra smiled mirthlessly. "What was that old engineer's trick? Multiply all your repair estimates by a factor of three?" 

Sish nodded, meeting the smile uneasily. "Admiral...about the Sumner and Commander Otaka..."

Kestra's smile dropped immediately, and her posture stiffened. "Thank you, Captain, that'll be all." She snatched up a padd hurriedly and began looking it over.

Sish stood, leaned over the desk, and gently took the padd from her, laying it back down on the desk, face-down. "Kestra...Maddie knew what she was doing..."

Kestra's head snapped up and around so fast that her bangs swayed angrily, as did the ponytail that ran down her back. "Really? She didn't stop long enough to think about the ones she was leaving behind, did she?" She spat bitterly, her eyes misting over quickly.

Sish stepped around the desk, taking Kestra's hands in his and crouching down on the balls of his feet in front of her. He looked up at her, frowning worriedly. "Kestra...she did her job...if that destroyer had been able to retreat, the Infies would've had information on our deployments in three sectors in every direction. What she did..."

"Shouldn't've been necessary!" Kestra spat, glowering down at him. "Not one of you had enough combined firepower to stop a destroyer?!"

"Their cruisers blocked us off. Maddie ran the Sumner around them and tried to take out their engines. They'd blown out her weapons-grid and her fighter screen was out of position...Kestra, she did what she had to do."

Kestra yanked her hands from his and turned her seat to glare out the window that served as the far wall of her office. "Thank you for your time, Captain. I will pass it along to Lazarus Station within the hour. Dismissed."

Sish looked empathetically at the back of her chair, his brow creasing in worry. Sighing, he stood and made his way to the door.

"Sish..." Kestra whispered after him, just as the doors opened. He turned slightly. "...my quarters, later...please..."

Sish nodded slightly. "I'll bring dinner." With that, he made his exit, not waiting for the 'thank you' he knew would never come.

  
  


***

  
  


Commander Tahna Fera, a Bajoran, nursed her kanar somberly. Beside her, Tekkeny Remmen nursed her own drink, just as somberly. They were in OS-5's lounge, at the bar, just...staring...into their drinks. The bartender had, wisely, decided to leave them to their brooding.

Neither of them really paid any attention to the normally pleasant music wafting through the lounge as people went about their typically vocally subdued business, talking amongst themselves of various and asundry things. Fera had recognized several crew members from the Mockingbird's battle group, but that majority was people she had never met; starbase personnel, and the like.

"Did..." Remmen started, her voice cracking slightly. She cleared her throat slightly and shifted her gaze slightly over towards Fera. "Did you get your report in?"

Fera nodded, sipping at her kanar. "Yeah. Admiral Troi got it. She's debriefing Sish."

Remmen nodded ever-so slightly. There wasn't the faintest trace of a snicker, and a whole slew of lewd comments didn't even occur to either of them. It was fairly common knowledge on the base, Mockingbird, and the Sumner that Admiral Troi, Captain Baakani, and Commander Otaka - commanding officer of the Sumner before it's destruction - had all been involved in a somewhat raucous affair. Both Fera and Remmen had seen the bruises Sish frequently wound up nursing after layover at starbase.

Remmen smirked slightly. "Dunno why, but that reminds me...'member when I got stuck in OS-5's sickbay after I got Terellian flu?"

Fera snorted, shaking her head. "How could I forgot? You gave it to me, remember?"

Remmen paused, thinking. "Oh...right. But anyways, Sish, Kestra, and Maddie all come in while the nurse is looking me over..."

"You told me this story." Fera said evenly, smirking sardonically. "Keep talking anyway."

"You're drunk."

"I'm working on it. I've got three months of hangovers to cram into one week of shore leave." Fera muttered, tossing back the kanar and slamming the cup down on the bar hard enough to make even the Brikar at the end of the bar jump. "I need another one!" She snapped at one of the waiters.

"Mmm. You too?"

"Just shut up and continue the story." Fera grumbled.

Remmen slugged back the rest of her drink, ordered another one, and continued. "So they all come in. Doctor takes one look at 'em, thrusts a dermal regenerator into Sish's hand, and says, "you broke it, you fix it." Woulda laughed my ass off if I hadn't been high."

"Uh-huh." She took the drink the bartender handed her, acknowledging him with a barely audible grunt. "What was it they pumped you up with?"

"Laughing gas." Remmen said in a smart-assed matter-of-fact manner, taking the drink proffered her and throwing back about a half of it.

"Oh, funny. The Cardassian has a sense of humor."

"Apparently so does the Bajoran."

They laughed it off; a short, bitter affair that matched their moods. It was an old game they played. They'd bait each other about their heritages, but beneath it all, neither really gave a damn.

So they sat and sipped at their kanar. "Y'know..." Fera spoke up after a few moments of silence. "That prick, Grier, went and croaked before I could pay off those twenty slips of latinum I owed him..."

"Oh, that'll be fun to pay off in the afterlife." Remmen grumbled. She polished off her second glass of kanar before looking at it in distaste. "This is getting a bit too salty..."

"Kanar's always been that way. I only stomach it to shut you up." Fera offered sarcastically, throwing back a full two-thirds of the liquid in her glass.

"Really? I thought it was because you liked salty liquids..." Remmen dropped her glass back on the bar, waving off the offer of another.

Fera snorted. "Reports of my promiscuity have been greatly exaggerated. Yours, on the other hand..."

"...are spot-on correct, yes, I know." Remmen hopped off her stool and thumbed the doors. "C'mon. I'm sick of this mopey-mourning. Let's go find some Klingons and get really 'faced."

"Oh, yum." Fera finished off the glass of kanar and rolled off her stool, tossing her glass to an off-guard bartender. "Drunken orgies of skin, booze and blades. Lead the way."

  
  


***

  
  


The doors to OS-5's Klingon mess flew open as Remmen and Fera came within five feet of them, and a large, burly human male shot out, slammed into the wall, and shattered the wall-panel as he hit it. Sparks erupted, and the whole panel flickered dangerously. The human landed on the floor, curled up in one big, snoring heap. Remmen and Fera looked at each other askance before stepping over the refrigeration-suited human and walking into the Klingon mess hall.

Fera's footing immediately slipped on a puddle of bloodwine just inside the door. Her feet shot out from under her, and, in a rather cartoon-like fashion, she landed flat on her back. "Ow!" She swore, pushing up on her elbows, the back of her uniform soaked in bloodwine. "Bloody Nara! What clumsy idiot dropped his drink right inside the Prophets-damned door?!"

A hand gruffly grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked Fera to her feet. She came face to face with a Klingon woman who grunted and shoved a bottle of bloodwine into her hand. "The same clumsy idiot who went out that door. Drink." She growled before disappearing back into the raucous crowd of singing, drunken Klingons, Romulans, Breen, Cardassians and ex-StarFleeters.

Fera and Remmen watched her go before looking back at each other and shrugging.

"Ah!" A voice in the crowd suddenly declared. A massive Klingon man disentangled himself from the non-helmeted obviously-wasted Breen hanging on him for support - who promptly collapsed face-down onto his table - and made his way towards the two women, snatching a cup of bloodwine from the barrel as he went. He thrust the drink into Remmen's chest, greeting both her and Fera with a huge grin. "It's about time you two showed up!"

Remmen took the bloodwine, grinning and sloshing back a healthy portion of it. She followed it promptly with a rather guttural belch. "Why, Karg, have you been waiting all this time for us?" She grinned widely, shooting him a fairly saucy look.

Karg threw an arm around both Remmen's and Fera's shoulders, steering them towards a table. "If I answered yes, would it get me anywhere..?"

  
  


***

  
  


Sish looked over at the chronometer on the wall, rubbing his eyes tiredly. 0800 hours. He'd slept in.

Leaning forward, he rested his face in his hands tiredly, stifling a yawn and wiping away sleep from his eyes. He stood, rolling his shoulder to work the kinks out of it. He'd slept on Kestra's couch, going over the after-action reports from the Mockingbird's and Hatshepsut's officers before he'd finally passed out. He scratched his jawline, smacking his lips and sparing a brief glance over at Kestra's bedroom. The door was open; he'd left it that way, just in case she'd needed him sometime through the night. They hadn't slept together. Without Maddie, it just didn't feel right sleeping with Kestra. Maybe later it would, but Sish didn't think that was going to be anytime soon.

Sish yawned, heading towards the replicator while still blinking the after-effects of sleep out of his eyes. "Coffee, black." He grumbled, scratching his talons over his skull plates. The mug of coffee appeared, and he promptly snatched it up and sipped at it. Making a face, he made his way back to the couch. Sitting gingerly, he laid his head back and stared at the ceiling for long moments, contemplating briefly before leaning forward and looking over the first in his thin stack of padds. He sipped at his coffee as he read it over, wrinkling his nose at the taste. He looked down at the mug, frowning. "Why do I drink this swill..?"

"Because..." Kestra's voice wafted in from her bedroom. Sish blinked, looking up at the still-open door to her bedroom. He hadn't heard her get up. "...it wakes you up. And I keep telling you to try a raktajino, but since you never listened to me or Maddie..." She appeared in the doorway, tying a robe about the waist and putting her hair up in the signature ponytail. She sat down on the couch next to him, kissing him gently on the cheek. "Thank you."

Sish shrugged, putting the mug of coffee on the table and resting his hand on her knee, smiling. "De nada. How'd you sleep?"

Kestra shrugged, putting a hand over Sish's and squeezing lightly. "As well as could be expected...just about everything aches, but..." She shrugged again and leaned into Sish gently. "I don't know. It hurts, but I'll live. I'm going to plan a memorial service for our casualties at 314-E. Do you want to say something there..?"

Sish nodded. "They were under my flag. I think Captains Grot and Prad would want to, as well."

Kestra nodded. The two sat in silence for long moments before she spoke again. "Have we heard from the Thoth yet?"

Sish shrugged. "I don't know. I just woke up myself. Haven't had the chance to do much more than order my cup of swill."

Kestra smirked. "Cute, Sish." She patted his arm before standing and walking to the replicator. She ordered herself a cup of raktajino before dropping in behind her workstation and calling up her workschedule and any reports that had come in the night before. Sish watched her, tapping a finger idly against the side of his padd, reflecting on just how much easier it was for veteran Divisioners to take death in stride. Commander Madrea Otaka, practically a family member for Sish and Kestra, had been killed in action yesterday afternoon, and after a night's sleep, both Sish and Kestra were able to get on with what they needed to do. They weren't done mourning, to be sure, but they were functional.

Sish bent to his padd again, tacking several keys, downloading the repair schedule and section reports from the Mockingbird.

"Mmm." Kestra said from her desk, causing Sish to look at her from above the lip of his padd. "The Thoth came in at about 0400 this morning, with the whole of her fleet. Nothing out of the ordinary to report. She reports that the Serpentis and her battle group took over patrols at 0300." She looked over at him, smiling slightly. "Good news, at least."

Sish nodded, and was about to say something when Kestra's console beeped at her. Brow knitting, she turned to look at it. "Who the hell would be calling now..?" She tapped a key, frowning at the screen. "This is Admiral Troi. What's going on?"

"Admiral..." The face of Commander Vort Narran, OS-5's Romulan station commander, appeared on-screen. "The Ravanok just reported in from Bajor sector. Last night, a joint Cardassian-Dominion fleet laid siege to the Federation-held outpost of Deep Space Nine. It fell at approximately 2300 last night, the Ravanok is guessing. I have requested confirmation from our contacts in the Federation, Klingon and Cardassian governments. But it looks as though the Federation and Klingons will issue a formal declaration of hostilities to the Dominion in short order. They're going to war."

Kestra snapped her head around to look at Sish, eyes wide in stark horror. The padd dropped from Sish's nerveless fingers and clattered to the carpet noiselessly. "Holy Eris..." He breathed.

Kestra didn't look back at the screen as she spoke. "Get all the information you can from all of our contacts. Call Section 31, the Tal Shiar, Klingon and Cardassian Intelligence...everything. Get something comprehensive on my desk by 1000 hours."

Vort nodded. "Understood, Admiral. Narran, out." The screen blinked off, going back to a view of Kestra's schedule.

"Sish..." She breathed, voice a hushed whisper. "Get every CO on-station to the war-room by 1100. This is going to be a very, very bad day."

  
  


***

  
  


Captain Houran Varpek, a Romulan, watched the viewscreen, fingers drumming angrily on the arm of his chair. His ship, the ODC Brain Drain, an Intrepid-class medium explorer-cruiser, was sitting in space, cloaked and well outside of the battle area. Onscreen, he and his bridge crew watched events unfold.

Five Jem'Hadar fighters were ganging up on a pair of StarFleet cruisers; the Romania and the Blue Jay. They had managed to hold their own for the past ten minutes, shoving it right back down the throats of the Jem'Hadar fighters. The debris from one of those fighters was already floating through space, but the two StarFleet starships were getting punished mercilessly.

Varpek's Andorian first officer, one Lt. Cmdr. Brell, was shooting him angry looks out of the corner of his eye. Brell's knuckles had gone from blue to white as he clutched the arms of his chair, teeth grinding slowly. "Sir..." He whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "The Blue Jay's primary scientific sensor grid is down, as is the Romania's. We could decloak, and they would never be able to detect the modifications installed on this ship. We wouldn't even need to stay..."

"Commander..." Varpek leaned over and hissed quietly in his first officer's ear. "You know full well that the Omega Charter prohibits us from engaging in wars involving two or more signature members when on opposing sides. And since the Cardassians have joined the Dominion, we are now subject to that limitation. Further, I have no wish to risk damaging the future timeline by having this ship detected before the time is right. If you want to fight the Dominion, I suggest you invoke your rights under the Re-Enlistment Protocols and rejoin StarFleet." A flash on the screen. Their attention went immediately back to the viewscreen, where they had a singularly spectacular view of the Romania's last action - ramming one of the Jem'Hadar fighters. As the glare faded away, Varpek turned back to face Brell. "For what it's worth, Commander, I share your hopes that the Federation wins this war, and I will use every contact I have on Romulus to attempt to convince them that joining the Federation in this conflict would be advantageous to them." Another flare. The Blue Jay, in her death throes, trying to take one of the fighters with her. And failing. "I know it means nothing to you now, but I am sorry."

Varpek stood, clasping his hands behind his back. "Tactical, scan for survivors."

Lieutenant Alice Jones at tactical checked her board briefly before shaking her head and shooting her CO a withering glare. "None. Sir."

Varpek closed his eyes and shook his head sadly. "Damn." He breathed. "Helm...there's nothing more we can do here. Set a course, 381 Mark 952 and engage at transwarp velocity. Tactical, inform Federation StarBase 375 that they have starships down. Use a Xepolite registry and frequency." He turned subtly, watching Brell out of the corner of his eye. "And open a frequency to the Romulan warbird Pranek, if you can find her. I have a favor I want to call in."

  
  


***

  
  


These types of meetings were normally few and far between. The last time they'd had a meeting like this...well, actually, it had been about the Dominion, too. Sish couldn't remember exactly what it had been about, but he recalled that it had something about whether or not the Dominion should be offered membership inside Omega Division. It had been decided then that they were still an unknown quantity, and that they may have, in fact, already had an experience with Omega Particle.

Sish looked around the table, taking in the view. There was Captain Karg, off the Prang. Captain Willis, off the Roanoke, Captain Prad of the Hatshepsut, Captain Grot of the Thoth. He recognized almost all of them, and could easily assign ships to the faces. The COs of the Bemor, Kevor, Tokath, Revelry, Necromantic, Cha'rath, Veth, Reevas, Noren, Faretsa. The list went on, and they still weren't all here. A mixture of Cardassians, Breen - he would have easily mistaken them as humans or Romulans, had they not been wearing those ridiculous refrigeration suits, minus the headgear - Romulans, Klingons, Shelliak, Tzenkethie, and those from Federation member worlds. They each took their seats - the Shelliak and the Tzenkethie sitting off in their own little corners, as usual - and talked amongst themselves in hushed whispers. It wasn't until Captain Jason Yale, off the Rebel Yell - one of the replacements for Sish's wounded battle group - dropped into a seat beside him that Sish realized he had to talk to someone now.

"So...you're Captain Sish Baakani. Of the Mockingbird, no less." Yale grinned, extending a hand. Sish shook it amiably, trying to keep the annoyed frown off his face and only partially succeeding. "Jason Yale, Rebel Yell. I was recently re-flagged, under you, from the Minerva, 3rd Fleet. Mind if I ask you something?"

Sish shrugged. Four good Klingon Captains, to be replaced with a motor-mouthed human...fate was one moody little bitch.

"Are you having any personnel problems? A mass exodus of Federation and Klingon officers and enlisteds invoking the Re-Enlistment Protocols and returning to their own militaries..?"

Sish looked at him, brow knitting. That hadn't been the question he'd been expecting. "Not...as such. Why?"

Yale shrugged, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. A frown creased his face. "I've had twenty men and women give me notice in the past five hours alone that they were going back to StarFleet and the KDF, at least until this business with the Dominion is settled. But oddly enough, I haven't had a single Cardassian crewman give me their resignation..."

Sish snorted. "Maybe we're finally getting it through to some of them that the UFP is dedicated to peaceful exploration and cooperation."

Yale rolled his eyes. "Careful, Captain. You're going to destroy my faith in the famed Cardassian stubborn pigheadedness. And thus shatter my whole take on the universe."

"Mmm." Sish grunted, smirking slightly. He looked up briefly as Captain Darja, of the Keldon-class ODF Greevo took the seat across from him.

Darja leaned forward, smiling. "Captain Baakani, Captain..." He looked at Yale and frowned ever-so slightly. "I'm sorry, what was your name?"

"Yale. Jason Yale." He offered amiably.

"Yes, of course, Captain Yale. I'm afraid, however, you have it all wrong. It's not the famed Cardassian stubborn pigheadedness you're thinking of, but the famed Cardassian arrogant stupidity." Darja growled, leaning back in his chair and tapping his fingers on the table in mild frustration.

Both Sish and Yale looked up at him, blinking. Darja laughed. "Don't look so surprised. There is no Obsidian Order here, and I'm fairly sure that my status in the Division gives me leave to speak my peace." He sighed and shook his head. "I am sorry to say that an ambitious fool, one Gul Dukat, has orchestrated a devil's deal with the Dominion. If I or any other Cardassian officers returned to our military, we'd be puppets to the Dominion. Besides, our time in the Division has actually led several Cardassian officers that it would be in the Cardassian Union's best interests to join the Federation." He snorted, shaking his head slightly. "A Cardassian in a StarFleet uniform...quite a change from the heavy armor we wear now, don't you think?"

Both Yale and Sish nodded, jaws hanging impolitely open. Sish shrugged his feet off the table and leaned forward. "Darja...are you telling me that the Cardassian contingent inside the Division...is against this war?"

Darja frowned slightly. "I believe that's what I said, yes..."

"Damnit, man, don't you have any pull inside your own government?" Yale burst before Sish could get the next sentence out. "Can't you make them stop this madness?"

Darja looked over at Yale skeptically. "You must be relatively new to our beloved Division, son. I have no contacts in the Cardassian Union, nor do any officers under my direct command. I can only assume that all the other Cardassian officers and enlisted men and women in the Division have the same problem. If not, then they're probably already giving their contacts a royal earful."

Yale's frown deepened, and he sagged back into his chair. "Damn." He muttered, sighing.

Sish shrugged, shot Darja an apologetic gaze, and leaned back in his own seat, kicking his feet up on the table again and crossing his arms over his chest, losing himself in his thoughts.

Three minutes passed, in which the last few Captains filed in hurriedly, some chewing on various breakfast pastries and the like in a rather rushed manner. Two minutes after that, Kestra Troi entered the room.

Sish's head snapped up as she entered. He swung his legs off the table and shot to his feet. "Admiral on deck!" He snapped crisply. Every other Captain at the table and seated in the room rocketed to their feet, standing at crisp military attention.

Kestra immediately did a double-take. She stopped dead in her tracks, blushing in surprise before smiling warmly at Sish. As she made her way around to the head of the table, she muttered, "You did that on purpose," to him. She placed her notes in front of her chair before nodding to the assembled officers. "Please, be seated." She said warmly. They did so, still crisp, still efficient. They then immediately laxed into typical Division looseness; slouching, scratching themselves, and one Breen Captain even picking her nose.

Kestra sat herself, leaning back in her chair and picking up her padds. She slung a leg around, putting her foot up on the table and reading from the data-padd in her hand. "'...in response to the repeated belligerent activities on the part of the stellar governmental body known as the Dominion, the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire jointly make this formal declaration of ongoing hostilities to the afore-mentioned government,' blah, blah, blah." She waved the padd in the air briefly before tossing it on the desk in disgust. "That's just a brief quote of the UFP's and KDF's declaration of war against the Dominion, issued at 0942 hours to the Cardassian government. If anyone wants a copy, it's in the station's data banks. I didn't see any reason to password-protect it. So..." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Here we are. StarFleet and the KDF are now at war with Cardassia. Is there any question where the Omega Charter stands here?"

None.

"Alright. Let me just reiterate it. As everyone here knows, Omega Division is a conglomerate of military operatives from over a dozen governments. The Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Cardassian Union are all signature members of the Omega Charter. This means that they are required to donate such-and-such amount of personnel and hardware through the most discreet channels - the Tal Shiar, not too long before all this, the Obsidian Order, Klingon Intelligence, the Tzen'Tashi and the like - by the end of every year. As it is, the Division now has an operational contingent of eight-hundred thousand officers and close to a billion enlisted men and women. We have outposts throughout each signature government, and our own central planetary base of operations is a safe-haven for us to raise children, from which we can draw in times of crises close to another one billion men and women.

"Additionally, as everyone here knows, Omega Division forces are forbidden from engaging directly in wars waged by any signature government. We are not just an elite special forces unit to be used by the Klingon Empire, or the Cardassian Union, or the Tzenkethie monarchy. As such, that leaves a percentage among us in an unenviable position, especially now. The Cardassian Union is now at war with the combined forces of StarFleet and the Klingon Defense Force. There are ex-StarFleet, ex-KDF, and ex-Cardassian Militia personnel serving on every Division cruiser, destroyer, fighter wing, frigate and combat support tender from here all the way back to Beta Aquilae.

"So..." She splayed her arms out wide. "Suppose one of our ships monitors a battle between Jem'Hadar and StarFleet forces. Joining either side in that fight would doubtlessly tip the odds substantially. However, it would mean exposing the Division's existence. Our orders here, ladies and gentlemen, are very clear; we will continue as if nothing new has happened. Infernal activity as of late seems to have been stepped up, so I want increased patrols in and around Treank, Breen, and Gristolian space. The Thoth and Serpentis have been picking up increased instances of background subspace flux near the Gristolian-Treank border. These could just be random subspace energy spikes, or they could be Infie subspace conduit formations. Clear?"

"Admiral..." Karg growled from his end of the table, where he was wedged in between a placid Vulcan woman and an eternally annoyed Romulan man - which made for an irritated Klingon - "What does this mean for our troop infusions? Are the Federation, Klingon and Cardassian personnel no longer to be assigned to us, or are their quotas simply reduced?"

Kestra frowned, shaking her head slightly in aggravation. "Until this situation is resolved, the Cardassian, Klingon and Federation governments are unable to supply us with the required ships and personnel. However, we have put in requests to our members in the other signature governments to make up for this deficit. Our own shipyards will step up production, and the Council has decided that our program for self-sufficiency is to be stepped up...again."

There were grumbles of dissent from around the table. "You mean they want us to abandon all ties to our various cultures and governments." Prad growled, her upper lip curling. "My great-grandparents abandoned Romulus and Earth after the Romulan-Earth war, Admiral, and raised their children in a whole new culture, utterly isolated from the idiotic decisions of those two governments. I have no intention of raising my daughter with Klingon values, Kestra." She quipped bitterly. "No offense." She added, almost as an afterthought, with a nod towards Karg. 

He returned it gruffly, turning to face Kestra. "I must agree, Admiral. I would no more raise my sons to be Breen than I would raise them to sleep with their own sisters."

Kestra held up her hands placatingly. "I know, I know, and I agree. And I've passed all this on to the Council. If you want to file your own protests against this action, give them to me, and I'll pass them on to the Council as priorities. But for now, I have to agree that this is necessary. Those Infernal bastards aren't going to just back off from...whatever the hell their primary goal is from this war, just because the neighborhood kids can't play nice with each other. Now...is there anything else?"

Everyone looked around at each other, but no one said anything. Kestra sighed, nodding. "Very well. Thank you. You'll be receiving your deployment assignments soon. Dismissed."

As they all rose and filed out, muttering and talking amongst themselves - some even stopping to pat Kestra on the shoulder in support - Sish leaned in close to her. "Are you alright..?"

Kestra nodded as the last of the Captains disappeared. "I'm...fine. I just...can't seem to concentrate right now. It's hard. I guess I'm worried about what this is going to do to our own war, and how we're going to make up the losses this will incur on us. Not to mention if the Federation'll even survive this war."

"It will." Sish nodded evenly. "Just about everyone wants it to - even the Cardassians."

Kestra blinked, then shrugged. "Eh...I guess I shouldn't be surprised...but it's nice to hear..."

"Yeah." Sish stood, and sat-leaned against the edge of the table, looking down at her and smiling. "Yeah, it is."

  
  


***

  
  


Lieutenant Brand moved from bed to bed, checking up on his patients. The Klingon woman he and Vass had pulled through surgery was in OS-5's intensive care unit, and his rotation through there was coming up. He spared a brief look upwards as Vass and Dr. Ipet, another Breen physician, entered the Mockingbird's infirmary. "Afternoon, Doctors." He grumbled, making several notes on his data-padd. "Vass, were you able to finish..."

"Yes." She snapped angrily, dragging a tired hand down her face and tossing a Breen padd bitterly to him. Brand fumbled with it before finally getting a handle on it and looking it over. "That's the list of corpses lined up in the docking bay right now. Make you a deal, Nikolai - next major engagement, I'll make the rounds on our living patients, and you get stuck with cadaver-duty." She leaned her back heavily against the wall behind him, rolling her head back and letting it thud against the wall. "Christ and Eris, I need a drink."

"You too?" Brand grumbled quietly, dropping the padd he'd just received on a tray before moving to his next patient. "I'm sorry about that, Vass. We needed a command-level signature on the bodies before their death certificates would be accepted, and we've been up to our..."

"I know." She cut him off with a dismissive wave. "I know. I've handled mortuary duty before, Nik."

"Buy you dinner later..?"

Vass nodded tiredly in response. "Sounds good. Try the new Tellarite restaurant on OS-5..?"

"Tellarite restaurant..?" Brand looked over at her, arching an eyebrow. "When did the Tellarites open up a restaurant out here?"

Vass shrugged, closing her eyes and sitting down cross-legged against the wall. "Probably while we were on deep patrol. Either way, I looked into the menu - did you know that they have real, honest-to-gods krilla fish out here..? Not replicated krilla fish, the real thing. Grilled, seasoned...I damn near swooned when I smelled it."

"Krilla fish..?" Brand asked probingly, looking over at her with an arched brow.

"Breen delicacy, especially in the hands of a master chef. Oh, gods, I remember when I was just a kid, my father would cook the best krilla filets you'd ever tasted..." She sighed happily, resting her head against her folded arms and basking in the memory.

She snapped out of it a quarter-second after one of the bio-beds started emitting a sour, keening trill. Brand's head snapped around to search out the source of the noise. Ipet was already maneuvering to the bio-bed. Brand and Ipet made it to the patient's side at about the same time. Brand snapped the tricorder open and pulled the scanner out, running it over the form of the Jaradan coiled up there. He swore under his breath, brow furrowing angrily. "Damnit, I'm not a Jaradan specialist...do we have any active Jaradan doctors, nurses or Corpsmen anywhere in this area?!"

Vass ran up to his side, already running through her photographic memory, trying to remember the names of active Jaradans inside the Division. "Doctor Klasssh Nee'Kralsh, on-board the ODCv Krall'na-Vessh."

Brand swore again, growling. "I'm reading Infernal nanites in his bloodstream. We've got preliminary renal and lung failure. Vass, get on the horn with Admiral Troi. Tell her to get the Krall here as soon as possible. Ipet, seventy-ccs..." 

"...adrozine. I know." Ipet answered, having already been in motion while the other two doctors were talking. He pressed the hypospray into the insectoid crewman's thorax, injecting him with the narcotic.

Brand ran the tricorder over the crewman's length, nodding rapidly. "Good...good, he's stabilizing...for now...but those things'll adapt." He snapped the tricorder closed with a loud crack. "And, of course, we've never been able to synthesize Jaradan plasma." He looked up out of the tops of his eyes at Ipet. The Breen doctor met his gaze, frowning deeply. "Are you a xenobiologist, by any chance..?"

The opposing doctor shook his head. "Sorry, Brand. Never thought I'd have a need." He snorted, shaking his head. "Show's how much I know."

"Damn!" Brand slammed his open-palmed fist into the side of the bed with a loud thud. He pointed at Ipet. "Alright. Keep treating him with adrozine. Take over my watch, and keep your eye on him." Brand wrung his hands, looking down at the hapless crewman twitching on the bio-bed sympathetically. "I've got research to do."

  
  


***

  
  


"...and of course, the bloody Infies are choosing now to pick up their offensive. We've been ordered out to sector 694-C, taking the cruiser Gray Lady and the corvette Hiroona, with the Rebel Yell and Prang flying heavy escort. Patrolling, of course." Sish sighed, crossing his feet over the conference room's table-top.

"Of course." Remmen grumbled.

Sish arched an eyeridge, knowing full well that Remmen had something else she wanted to say. He continued anyway. "How are we shaping up, compartmentally?"

"Tactical's ready. We've been rearmed and repaired, and all that remain are a few weapons-checks that should take a grand total of twenty minutes." Remmen grumbled, drumming her fingers on the table-top in an agitated fashion.

Sish nodded before turning his attention to Priscilla Gray. "Engineering..?"

Gray's left eye twitched. "The Lazarus systems have repaired all of the ablative armor and secondary systems. Emergency thrusters are still a bit twitchy, but I've got repair team Delta-Alpha on it. And, uh..." She scratched the back of her head, frowning. "...the replicators in Lieutenant Jamison's quarters are still only serving Arbazan cuisine."

Sish stared blankly at her for a few moments before speaking again. "Arbazans...aren't they an aviary species..?"

"Yep. Worms and bugs abound."

"Eugh...can we billet him somewhere else..? Stick him in with Ensign Nasan, or something?"

"The Mugato, sir..? I'm not sure that would be much of an improvement." Fera interrupted, coughing slightly. "To be blunt, sir, Nasan makes everyone around her nervous. Something about either the all-encompassing white fur, or the constant nakedness. Hell, sir, she pushes even the Division's standards of conduct, and everyone here knows how lax those are..."

"And yet, despite all this, Commander, it'd be damned funny to stick those two together for...how long was it going to take to fix this, Priss?"

Gray shrugged. "Two, three days, if I sit on it."

"For the next two or three days. Feel free to sit on it, Priss."

"Consider it sat on, sir."

Fera rolled her eyes as everyone around the table shared a good snicker.

"Excellent. Medical..?"

Brand rubbed his eyes tiredly, shrugging like a man who'd had the weight of the world on his shoulders for years. "We lost seven people in that Infie cluster two days ago. All of our injured have been transferred to OS-5, and we've received the medical files and histories of our replacement personnel. Doctors Vass, Ipet, and Huarati have taken charge of our people until we return. We've been restocked, and we're good to go. However, the CMO and his staff could use eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Sir."

Sish nodded slowly. "Tell them they've got it. As soon as this meeting is over, every one of your people is to grab some shut-eye. It'll take us at least a day in transwarp to get to sector 694-C. Good?"

"Acceptable." Brand grumbled, disappearing into his own thoughts as soon as the reply left his lips.

Sish frowned before turning to his helmsman and Chief Aviation Officer, Lieutenant Seltra Huara, a fairly reedy Saurian woman with a very pleasing sing-song voice. "Aviation and Propulsion..?"

Seltra shrugged, picking at a talon in a care-free manner. "Warp, transwarp, and impulse systems are all operating at peak efficiency, thanks to Priss' magic hands. We've taken on an extra Basilisk-class fighter/bomber from the Hatshepsut, adding it to Breaker flight. That gives us two fighter-bombers with full tri-cobalt and pulse-phaser armaments, and three Perseus-class fighter/interceptors, with full pulse-phaser and LORAIN armaments. And the usual assortment of fun attachments. We even got a new toy from SPECFOR - some sort of advanced anti-shipping torpedo. Just two of these bad boys are supposed to be able to scrap a New Orleans-class frigate. Can't wait to try 'em out."

Sish shook his head, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly. "Only you, Selt. Only you."

"Why, thank you, sir."

  
  


***

  
  


Brand looked like three layers of hell and then some. Everything about him was dissheveled, and the two separate mounds of clutter - one of candy bar wrappers, the other of padds - scattered throughout his office were tantamount evidence of just how deeply he was engrossed in what he was doing. That was how Fera found him when she entered; hunched over his desk, squinting at his desktop computer display and grumbling to himself.

Clearing her throat, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the side of his doorway. When he didn't respond, she rapped her knuckles on the window-pane of his office. Brand damn near jumped out of his skin, jerking upright in his chair and looking around hurriedly for the source of the noise. When he finally saw Fera, he frowned at her and stabbed at his eyes tiredly.

"You're supposed to be sleeping. You rode the Captain pretty hard about it, as I recall." Fera said simply, stepping into the office and brushing the clutter out of the guest's chair. She sat easily, crossing her legs and meeting his gaze levelly.

"Didn't have the time to sleep." He grumbled, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his face, scratching at the stubble forming around his jaw-line. "Got work to do."

"Uh-huh." Fera reached out and snagged the nearest padd off the desk, glancing at the header briefly before tossing it back on the desk. "Comparative articles on Jaradan and Treank physiology." She pulled another padd off the stack and glanced it over briefly. "Doctor Jaganarro's essays and collective notes on Infernal Nano-Tech Weaponry, and on, and on." She tossed that padd on top of the first. "Crewman Klasssh, I assume?"

"I slipped up. He was the only Jaradan on-board, and I never bothered to study up on their biology." Brand growled impatiently, drumming his fingers on the desk in a truly agitated fashion.

"You're not a Prophet, and you're not a Q. You're human. Fallible."

"The hell you say." Brand growled, not bothering to meet her gaze. He instead directed his gaze out the window of his office, looking out at the rows of empty bio-beds. "I'm a doctor. I let myself get lazy. I neglected my responsibility to both my crewmate and my patient by not being ready to treat him on a moment's notice. Now, please, Commander, if you'll excuse me..." He bent back to his computer screen, brow furrowing.

Fera grabbed the screen from the desk and tossed it nonchalantly over her shoulder and out into the hallway. "You're going to your quarters, doctor. Doctors Vass and Ipet have the situation under control, and beating yourself silly over that which you can't change isn't going to help a damn thing."

"Damnit, Fera..!"

"Nik. Pal. Buddy." She reached across the desk, grabbed him by the front of his jacket, and literally pulled him over the top of his desk to eye-level. "Bed. Now. Either you sleep, or I join you. And then we'll both end up back here in a few hours. It's your pick."

"Damnit, Fera, I - OOF!" Brand had started to protest, shrugging himself out of her grip. However, he ended up over-balancing himself, rolling over the top of his desk, and knocking both himself and Fera to the ground, with his face at about her knee-level. Grumbling, he looked up at her, putting his chin in one hand and drumming the fingers of the other hand on her knee-cap. "Fine. I can spare four hours." He finally grumbled, standing.

Fera shrugged, rolling up to a sitting position and running a hand through her hair. "Make it eight." She said, pulling an unopened candy bar off the desk and peeling the wrapper away. "You've got the time." She took a bite of the bar as Brand walked past, patting her on the shoulder on his way out. "Hey, these are pretty good..." She said as the sickbay doors opened to allow Brand's passage, more to herself than to anyone else.

"Don't eat too many. They've got ginger in them!" Brand called to her as the doors hissed shut behind him.

A slow, playful grin crossed Fera's lips as she looked down at the candy bar. "Really now..?"

  
  


***

  
  


Remmen leaned forward against her console, watching the main viewscreen and trying to keep every trace of amusement out of her expression. The officer of the deck, Major Walter Kemmer, had switched the viewscreen's pickup from the rather bland view of the transwarp corridor to the inside of Ensign Nasan's quarters. With audio pickups engaged, the bridge crew's mid-day shift was treated to the view of Lieutenant (jg) Jamison and Ensign Nasan having to live together. Nasan was currently hanging upside down from the ceiling in the sleeping position Mugato men and women generally preferred. But she was singing, not sleeping. She was singing Klingon opera while Jamison desperately tried to get some sleep before his bridge-shift started. Even more amusing, she was nailing every note, pitch and inflection with a skill approaching professionalism.

Ensign Kalnerian, a Treank woman, was leaned back in the navigation chair, a steaming cup of, of all things, liquified seaweed in her hands. The smell was surprisingly inoffensive, but actually served to calm the nerves. Kalnerian was one of those rare people who could concentrate on about a dozen things at once. Thus, it was no trick at all for her to split her attention between the transwarp corridor and the almost-constipated look on Jamison's face.

Lieutenant (jg) Thaff, a painfully young Breen man, sat at ops, his eyes glued to his console. His back was ramrod straight, and Remmen knew the poor kid must have been sweating underneath that encounter suit. Thaff was one of the recent recruits from OS-5, and was so green that it hurt Remmen's eyes to look at him. He fussed over his console, his helmet moving back and forth in one of the most distracting ways Remmen had ever seen.

Remmen turned her attention back to the viewscreen just in time to see Jamison hurl a pillow at Nasan. Kalnerian snickered at her station, sipping her seaweed. "This is almost as good as the time the Captain got hypnotized at Macross Island."

"Is that in the logs? Did you guys remember to record that?" Someone from the back of the bridge piped up. Remmen turned her head slightly to look at Crewman Tsvah, one of the few Tzenkethie on-board. He was a member of the Mockingbird's Hazard Team, Alpha Squad. He tossed the padd in his hands over to Remmen, who barely caught it. "Oh, yeah, Heller says he's still waiting to talk about those, quote, "thrice-damned tribbles" someone put in his quarters. And to remind you that you lost the bet, whatever in the hell that is."

Remmen looked at Tsvah with a completely deadpanned expression. "Nevermind, Tsvah. And about the tribbles...eh...tell him he has my authority to give them to Commander Fera. With my blessings, even."

"Uh-huh." Tsvah wasn't paying any attention, instead busy with sorting through the computer's recreational database. "Oh! Is this it?" He tapped the screen once and read through the file's description. "Yup. That's it." He turned to face the view-screen. Once seeing it, he blinked. Hard. "Wow...I never knew Ensign Nasan was that flexible."

"Uh...what are those two doing, anyway?" Another voice, this one belonging to Crewman Krist, spoke up from the Science II station.

"Nothing I wanna watch." Tsvah grumbled. "Computer, load file Baakani-Fairy and display on main viewscreen."

"Hey! I was watching that!" Kalnerian grumbled, leaning her head back to look at Tsvah upside down.

"That's because you're a pervert." Tsvah responded, watching the viewscreen as it loaded the requested file. Kalnerian grumbled to herself, but offered no further argument.

The view-screen snapped back to life, replacing the Division's Delta with an amateur-video of three rows of chairs, each occupied with various people -- most of them Mockingbird personnel in off-duty dress. The first few minutes were fairly dry as the hypnotist explained what he was going to do. It wasn't long before Sish, in the third row center, was snoring.

And then the hypnotist rang the gong.

Sish was out of his chair so fast that he knocked it over. Pumping his fists into the air, he declared for all the world to hear, "My name is Tinkerbell, and I am the biggest fairy at DisneyLand!"

The first chortles of laughter weren't even out of everyone's mouths before Thaff was up and out of his chair, standing at ramrod-stiff attention. "Captain on the - what in the..? Where is he?!" He yelled, looking around in confusion for the Captain. Everyone on the bridge fell into crippling peals of laughter, Tsvah clutched his sides while Keffer fell out of his chair. When the gong rang again, Thaff whipped his head around to look at the screen, where Sish did it again. "Oh...godsdamnitall." Sullenly, he sank back into his chair while the laughter continued.

By the time Tsvah had stumbled, cackling, into the turbolift, Remmen had managed to catch her breath and somehow restrict herself to a few loose giggling fits. It was then that her console beeped at her. Grumbling, she checked what it was with just a quick glance at said console. Her composure straightened, her head snapping up to look at Kemmer. "Major..." She snapped at him as he eased back into the Captain's chair, still snickering. "Major!" She snapped again, harsher, when he didn't respond the first time. "We've got an incoming distress call on a Federation sub-space frequency."

Kemmer snapped back into focus, as did everyone on the bridge. Kalnerian finished her drink hurriedly and tossed the cup aside, bending down to her console and making sure everything was still in order.

"On-screen!" Kemmer snarled, standing from the chair and folding his hands behind his back.

Remmen tapped the single control necessary, shifting her gaze towards the viewscreen.

The picture of Sish passed out on the floor, drooling, while everyone applauded wildly was replaced immediately by a static-filled image of a panicked and extremely haggard-looking young man with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. "...-peat, this is the colony of Beta Cygni calling any ships in the area. We are under attack by Jem'Hadar forces. We need immediate assistance. To any Maquis, StarFleet, Klingon, damnit anyone in this system! We need help, NOW!" A nearby explosion in the background. The young man looked up, his face hardening. Shaking his head, he turned his head back to the camera. "I'm setting this on automatic repeater. We'll try to hold them off...keep them away from the children...get here as fast as you can." The camera was shoved aside, and the picture promptly cut out. A second passed, and the message started repeating itself.

"Senior officers, to the bridge!" Kemmer roared. "All hands, secure for general quarters! Helm, disengage transwarp drive and bring conventional drives online. Engineering, activate stealth systems. Tactical, warm up the turrets. Red Alert!"

  
  


***

  
  


By the time Seltra stepped onto the bridge, zipping up her uniform jacket, everyone else was already there. Apparently, however, she'd arrived just in time to hear Sish bellow for a status report.

"Black Hole, WetBall and cloaking systems activated and reading green!" Gray called from the Engineering console off to the command deck's side. "Warp and impulse drives also reading green!"

"Weapons systems armed and running hot! Torpedo tubes one, two, three and four clear and loaded!" Remmen sounded off, checking over her board. "Damage control teams are in place, and Lazarus systems are online!"

"Operations reporting general quarters, sir!" Lieutenant Gatto Belorian, another Treank and the Mockingbird's chief operations officer, snapped, settling into his seat. "All hands report general quarters! All systems online and functional!"

"Helm answering to general quarters, Captain!" Seltra cooed in her typical sing-song voice, somehow taking the tension on the bridge down half-a-notch. "Breaker wing has been scrambled and awaiting launch orders!"

"Great!" Sish finally snapped, easing into his chair and consulting the console built into the arm of the chair. "Now, someone wanna tell me why the hell we're at general quarters?!"

"Sir, I ordered the response to a distress call sent by a former Federation colony inside the Cardassian-Federation demilitarized zone, under attack by a Jem'Hadar garrison. I ordered our exit from transwarp into normal space so that we might intervene." Kemmer finally stepped off the command deck, trying to disappear into the background.

He failed. Miserably.

Sish's head snapped around to look at him, his jaw hanging somewhat open. "You what?!" Kemmer opened his mouth to repeat the statement, but Sish waved it off. "Cdr. Remmen, play that distress call back on the main viewer!"

Remmen's fingers flew over her console, and immediately the distress call came up. The bridge went silent as all heads turned to watch the plea for help. Sish leaned forward in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his face, fire burning just behind his eyes. The distress call ended, and all eyes turned to Sish.

For a long moment, he simply sat and contemplated. "Staff meeting. Now." He stood from his chair, stepping off the command deck and grabbing Kemmer by the shoulder. "Lieutenant Kalnerian, you have the bridge!" Sish stormed, shoving Kemmer bodily into the conference room.

The rest of the senior staff followed, leaving a terrified Lt. Kalnerian to pick her jaw up off the floor. Every eye on the bridge, wide with disbelief and surprise, turned towards her. "Um...kay?"

  
  


***

  
  


"I want you to explain to me what the hell you were thinking, Major!" Sish roared, grabbing the smaller man by the front of his jacket and slamming him up against the bulkhead. "Where in the hell do you get off violating the Omega Doctrine like that?!"

Kemmer set his jaw and met Sish's glare evenly, lip curling upward in a snarl. "Those colonists gave up their claims as Federation citizens. The Doctrine and it's Directives only apply to signature members."

Sish slammed Kemmer against the bulkhead again before letting him go, stalking around the length of the conference table. "They're under attack by forces engaged in hostile actions with signature members, which flat-out means that we - "

"Can't save three million civilians from a slaughter?!" Kemmer roared, slamming his fists down on the table-top and meeting Sish's gaze over that same table evenly. "You're trying to hide behind the letter of the law, Captain, so we - "

"At ease, Major!" Fera finally snapped. Her gaze, however, was fixed on Sish; not Kemmer. "You're dismissed, Major."

Kemmer didn't budge.

Fera's gaze turned on him. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice dripped venom when she spoke next. "Don't make me say it again, Kemmer."

The two stared each other down for a brief moment. But, finally, Kemmer nodded and strode out of the conference lounge.

Gray poked her head around Fera, blinking rapidly at what had just happened. "Whoa..." She looked up at Fera, grinning. "Mrowr! Fsst! Fsst!"

Fera's only response was to smack Gray cleanly upside the head.

"No offense, Captain, but..." Belorian eased out from behind Fera, giving her as wide a berth as the room would allow. "Kemmer's right. Technically, neither the Dominion nor the colonists out here are signature members of the Omega Doctrine. And Directive ninety-something-something does say that we are supposed to respond to any distress calls that wouldn't expose the Division. And..." Sish stood over Belorian now, casting his shadow over the poor, stupid Ops officer. Very slowly, very deliberately, Sish crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at the young Treank officer. "...and...uh...well, I mean...um...er...uh...Commander Fera..? A little, ah...help?" The 'please' went unspoken.

Fera rolled her eyes. Walking over, she shoved Belorian purposefully into Remmen's waiting arms. Remmen promptly smacked the hell out of him.

Fera leaned against the table and spoke softly to Sish, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it. "Sish, the only crime those people committed is being stupid enough to trust the Cardassian government. Neither StarFleet nor the KDF have the resources to help this colony, but we do. Three million people, Sish." Her eyes met his, and her frown deepened. "Unless you want another Khitomer. Signey Base Anchorage. These are three million people who don't have to die in this war."

Silence passed between them for a long time while the two tried to stare each other down.

Fera's eyes narrowed again, her mouth tightening into one hard line. Her voice dropped still further, now only a harsh, angry whisper only the two of them could hear. "Do I have to beg? You've seen plenty of that, haven't you..? All that time in the Madred villages, I'm sure you saw a lot of begging. How many did you see, Sish..? And you never helped a damned one of them, did you? Not a single. Prophets-damned. O - "

"Alright." Sish hissed, grabbing her upper arm and hissing ferociously in her ear. "You've made your point, Commander. You've made your goddamn point."

  
  


***

  
  


"I need options, people, and I need them five minutes ago. What do we have?"

"A full complement of two-hundred fifty quantum torpedoes, five tri-cobalt devices, and one Omega torpedo."

"Gee. Great. Let's use the Omega."

"Ha ha. Sir."

"Shut up, Tekkeny."

"We obviously can't evacuate Beta Cygni by ourselves. That would take a Shelliak worldship...scratch that. Three worldships. Between us, the Gray Lady, the Hiroona, the Rebel Yell and the Prang, we might be able to cram five thousand in. Our best bet is to send the Prang home and get some sort of evacuation effort going."

"What sort of window are we looking at?"

"Are you kidding? To get those kinds of resources here, it'd take at least a week. If we were in the Federation, it'd take months. The soonest we could be relieved would be two days from now."

"Who..?"

"The Memphis."

"Oh, great. Captain JackAss."

"Wonderful. So we can maintain our space superiority. Air..?"

"Shouldn't be a problem, Cap'n. Every fighter in our bays is atmosphere-capable."

"Ground..?"

"That's...where it gets tricky. The only special forces unit we have on-board is the Hazard Team. And to stop a regiment's progress for a whole week..? It's asking for trouble. But it's definitely doable."

"Great. Prep the Hazard Teams. Have Ensign Nasan work Tactical while you're doing that."

"Oh, yay. Sir."

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

  
  


***

  
  


"Auto-defense systems, active! Countermeasures, primed and ready for drop! Lazarus systems, on-line! The Mockingbird is cocked, locked, and ready to rock, sir!"

Sish spared a brief moment to look over at Ensign Nasan, arching an eyebrow ever-so slightly. He shifted his questioning gaze to Fera and mouthed the words 'ready to rock?' She simply shrugged and rolled her eyes.

Sish cocked his head slightly, giving a slight mental shrug. "All ships, all hands, secure stealth systems. Aegis systems, fire up! Mockingbird to all ships; fire at will."

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly as the lights brightened briefly - the ship's automatic response secured stealth systems. On-screen, Beta Cygni loomed large, as two Jem'Hadar Heavy Cruisers and a full squadron of fighters scrambled to respond to the Omega Fleet's sudden appearance. "Tactical, target lead cruiser."

"Targeted, sir."

"Blue light special, on my mark."

Nasan smirked, and her finger moved to the forward torpedo firing control, resting just above it.

"Fire!"

  
  


Four quantum torpedoes erupted from the Mockingbird's forward saucer torpedo tube, straight for the lead Jem'Hadar cruiser. The torpedoes, using technology pilfered from an alternate dimension from a group called the Krenim Imperium, went right through the cruisers shielded and dispersed. Two of the torpedoes obliterated the warp-core connection struts, while the others blew away both the bridge and engineering sections. The bulk of its chassis destroyed, the hulking ship suffered several large strings of secondary explosions as its power systems backlashed and overloaded. Debris flew, consuming three fighters.

Two-point-three seconds. Exactly.

The Gray Lady followed, riding the Mockingbird's exhaust. A refitted Omega variant of StarFleet's New Orleans-class frigate, the Gray Lady had been refit as a heavy-beam frigate. With its entire torpedo and scientific sections removed completely, it boasted an impressive array of offensive and defensive phasers and disruptors. Red, blue and green bands of light erupted from seven different points on the frigate's hull, picking off seven of the Jem'Hadar strike fighters. It pushed through what was left of the Jem'Hadar squadron, and its rear batteries opened fire, literally vaporizing two and crippling three others.

Four-point-six seconds.

The corvette Hiroona moved to engage the second Heavy Cruiser. A Romulan-designed Raptor-class corvette, it boasted three separate torpedo tubes and seven advanced disruptor arrays. Two quantum torpedoes sprang from its forward launching bays, arcing up and under the cruiser's belly. As the first Jem'Hadar strike fighter, obviously a reserve held back in case of attack, tried to clear the cruiser's fighter bay, the first torpedo struck. Fire blossomed and erupted, consuming both fighter hangars and the whole rear quarter of the ship. The second torpedo punched cleanly through the rear-engineering section, tunneling through half the ship before exploding like a firecracker. The effect was immediate, as the cruiser lurched forward, and erupted fire outwards from its six cardinal axis-points. Half a second after that, the cruiser simply destroyed itself.

Five-point-nine seconds.

  
  


"Both Jem'Hadar cruisers destroyed. The Rebel Yell is reporting firing solution on the single strike fighter that got by the Gray Lady. No, wait. Scratch that. Bogey sixteen has been destroyed. Area is secure, Captain."

"Hardly." Sish grumbled, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair in a truly agitated manner. "Don't forget that we're behind enemy lines, and that's not even including any Infie units that might be in the area, spoiling to avenge those destroyers we sent packing." He turned his head the twenty-degree arc necessary to fix the ops station in his gaze. "Has Raven's Roost turned anything up on the troop movements of the Jem'Hadar down there..?"

"Yes, sir. We're coordinating with the Gray Lady, Hiroona, and Rebel Yell, setting up a bi-static search pattern on the planet below. Report Jem'Hadar life-signs within all heavily populated areas. Scanners indicate...Jesus, sir, those colonists are getting eaten alive."

Sish shook his head, slowly and deliberately. "Find me their CnC and supply depots. Those bastards want to play dirty, that's fine with me."

"Done, sir. Information has been relayed to the rest of the fleet."

"Ensign, rig forward torpedo tubes for planetary bombardment." Sish snarled, standing from his chair and stepping down from the command platform, pacing back and forth in front of the viewscreen slowly.

"Uh...which targets, sir..?" Nasan inquired, scratching her head questioningly.

"Coordinate with the Hiroona and Rebel Yell. I want all of those supply lines out of my way."

  
  


***

  
  


"Where the flying hell is Ferme?!" Remmen called, locking the strap of her combat helmet securely into place around her chin.

"Taking a pre-fight dump, ma'am." Lieutenant Marcus Heller said evenly beside her. Heller was a distinguished human man. With a cultured gotee and tightly-trimmed mustache that framed his mouth and made him look older than his twenty-nine years, Heller was the immediate commanding officer of the Mockingbird's elite Hazard Team. "He's afraid that every time he transports down into a combat zone, he'll end up having crapped himself. Ma'am."

Remmen looked at her 2I/C with the blankest stare she could manage, right before breaking into a gut-clenching guffaw.

The Hazard Teams were a product of StarFleet ingenuity run head-long into Tzenkethie thriftiness. They were elite commando groups carried aboard every starship inside the Division, trained in espionage, small unit tactics, guerilla warfare, crowd control, sabotage, evacuation procedures and even embroidery. (The last one was at the demand of the team's resident Betazoid, and was specific only to the Mockingbird.) Consisting of a various number of teams, ranging from a single eight-man squad to full forty-man squadrons, they were sortied to those missions that were too dangerous for a ship's command staff.

Finally, Ferme came back from the can. "About time, Henry. How was the crapper?" Remmen grumbled at him.

"Oh, fine." Ensign Henry Ferme grumbled back at her, leaning against the armory's main table and studying the topographical readout on it. "Wondering why you don't visit anymore, but fine nonetheless."

"Charming." Remmen drawled, directing her gaze down to the table. "Here's the sit-rep. The spine-heads are making a rapid push into just about every major city on the surface of Beta Cygni. Their main forces are trying to take the military installations on the northern and southern continents. Thankfully, most of the civilians are being evacuated to these strongholds, where they might be able to hold the Jem'Hadar off for a good long while. But they're getting massacred. The Gray Lady is going to sortie Hazard Teams Iota-Alpha-Alpha and Zeta-Delta-Gamma to the southern continent city of New Johannesburg, while Alpha, Gamma and Epsilon teams - that's us, people - deploy northerly, to the colony's capital of Vasuda. We're to push the Jem'Hadar back, get the civilians to the shelters, and hold down the fort. Once we get this done, we hold down the fort and keep the civilians fat and happy until our reinforcements get here. Any questions?"

She looked up, to meet a sea of aghast faces.

Finally, Tsvah broke the silence. "This is a frinxing joke, right? Are you out of your stroking mind, Tek?! You're sending barely a hundred-fifty people to baby-sit three million civilians. Civilians, for the Emperor's sake! Whose idea was this?!"

"Mine." Remmen growled, meeting his gaze evenly. "The Jem'Hadar are dumb as rocks, and we're in the process of removing the Vorta they depend on. Without them, and with their supply lines disrupted, we may have a helluva time keeping everyone bottled up, but it's the best chance we've got. Besides, you're forgetting the local authorities."

"Colonial militia. At best. Fifteen year old kids with slug throwers, at worst. Permission to piss myself with joy, ma'am."

"Shut up, Crewman. Anyone have anything constructive to say?"

"Aside from an old Egyptian blessing, not one damned thing, sir." Heller grumbled quietly, leaning against the M57-C energy assault rifle he'd been issued.

She nodded, meeting everyone's eyes briefly. "This is a crisis situation, people. I need cool heads, steady triggers, and lots and lots of patience. Remember, these are Federation colonists we're working with. They'll cooperate, but don't piss in their pools if you don't have to. You have your assignments. Report to the transporter rooms on the double. Dismissed!"

They snapped to attention and filed out of the armory, whispering amongst themselves before running off to their various transport sites. 

Only Heller stayed to confer with Remmen, who slapped her face into her hands angrily the instant the doors whispered shut. Heller put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"This is either going to go by the numbers, or it's going to be one of the most colossal bungles in Division history. Tell me the truth, Marcus...how many are we going to lose?"

Heller breathed in deeply through his nose, turning it over in his mind. "Including those already lost...a quarter million, at best. At worst, I'd say all our Hazard Teams and most of the colonists."

"But we'll save some of them."

"We've already improved their odds a hundred-fold. Now we see whether or not we just delayed their obliteration."

Remmen looked up at him, frowning in a sarcastic sort of way. "Well, thank you for that ray of sunshine, Lieutenant."

Heller grinned widely, winking and thumping her closed-fist on the shoulder-padd. "Anytime, Tek."

  
  


***

  
  


"Lt. Cdr. Remmen, are your people ready for insertion?"

"We were ready two minutes before you gave the word, sir."

Sish blinked, running that over in his mind. He shook it off, dismissing it as one of Remmen's occasional faux pas. He turned to look over at Seltra. "Has Breaker wing finished its bombing runs yet?"

"Confirmed target paints and kills on ninety-eight percent of the targeted installations, sir. They're on their way back up now." Seltra cooed back at him, never taking her eyes from her console.

"Baakani to Remmen. Go."

  
  


***

  
  


They materialized in the center of hell. Screaming, yelling, weapons-fire, explosions, the sounds of fire crackling.

Hazard Team Alpha-Alpha-Theta, led by Remmen, dispersed by pairs into the warzone, keeping each other covered. Everyone stayed low, keeping their gazes sharp and their rifles clutched tightly in their hands. Remmen stopped and crouched, waving the others down as she did so. The eight-man team obediently hit the dirt. Remmen tapped her comm-badge and started whispering harshly. "This is Hazard Team Alpha-Alpha-Theta of the USS Mockingbird to any and all colonial forces within range. If you can hear this signal, please respond immediately. I say again, this is the cavalry to all colonial militia within range. Respond."

Brief seconds. Remmen turned her head to look at her Betazoid Corpsman, Crewman Salina Darren, to check if she was getting anything. Salina was already projecting her mind outwards, however, looking for others within her range. She looked up at Remmen suddenly and nodded vigorously.

Remmen nodded in response and tapped two fingers to her breastplate twice, then snapped her arm out and pointed straight outwards, gesturing for Salina to take point. Salina scrambled into a running crouch as Remmen made a circling gesture in the air for a second and pointed at Salina, ordering the rest of the squad to follow the Betazoid woman.

The squad moved in and out of buildings, out into the open street, running back and forth in a dizzying zig-zag pattern that reeked of military precision. They carried on for almost a minute, sprinting headlong through burned out buildings as the sounds of combat grew closer. Finally, Salina slowed and dropped to a knee, tapping her shoulder twice and pointing straight ahead. It was unnecessary, however, as the entire wall of the building the squad was running through had been practically blown out with weapons-fire. They could see the fighting going on, could see the desperately out-matched militia forces try to fight from behind natural barriers against the entrenched Jem'Hadar.

Remmen ran up behind a pillar immediately as Tsvah dropped down to hit the deck, checking his repeater's charge one more time and lining up his firing arcs. The squad grabbed what cover they could, lining up their shots while waiting for the firing order.

About a quarter-second after the last man had grabbed a fox-hole, it came. "Open fire!" Remmen roared, squeezing the trigger of her phaser rifle. A virtual wall of phaser and disruptor fire chewed outwards from the building, through the holes in the wall, chewing into the Jem'Hadar ranks with ruthless precision. Salina and Tsvah, the heavy weapons experts, weaved the auto-repeater rifles back and forth through the Jem'Hadar line while Master Chief Kreul, the Klingon Sniper, picked them off.

The last Jem'Hadar fell about two seconds after the fire order was given, his face ripped in half with a well-placed phaser pulse.

"Clear?!" Remmen yelled, waiting for the counter-response from the colonial militia. The response wasn't quite what she had been expecting.

"Who the hell just did that, and what the hell took you so long?!" One of the militia yelled back.

"Sound your name!" Remmen hollered back, hitting the ground in a ducking roll and sprinting to duck behind a scorched section of wall.

"Sergeant Major Virginia Cunningham, 12th Beta Cygni Colonial Guardsmen! Who the hell are you?!"

"Lieutenant Commander Tekkeny Remmen, ODD Mockingbird! We're here to save your asses!"

"I'd never have guessed." The woman yelled back, voice oozing with sarcasm. "Now get your asses out here and stop wasting my time!"

"Tell your people to hold their fire and you've got a deal!" Remmen answered. She waited long enough to verify that Cunningham was passing that order on to the rest of her people before sticking two fingers in the air and circling them around wildly. She eased out of her position slowly, keeping her top low and gazing around sharply, looking warily for any Jem'Hadar left alive. She hurried up to the woman standing and waving wildly, acting as though she were the biggest asshole the High Gul had ever put on the battlefield. Remmen grabbed the young woman by the front of her blast-vest and yanked her back down behind the barrier the militia had erected.

"Don't be an ass!" Remmen hissed, flicking open the blast-visor on her combat helmet. "Keep your ass behind the barricade, for the High Gul's sake!" She frowned at the utterly shocked expression on the young woman's face. "What?!"

"Christ! You're a bloody Cardie!" Cunningham breathed, staring wide-eyed at Remmen.

Remmen mentally kicked herself for being such an idiot. These were humans and ex-Federation types, most of whom had lived through the Border Wars, and now this atrocity. The fact that a Cardassian woman would be riding to the rescue on their behalf would've been utterly impossible for them to comprehend. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Remmen clamped a hand over the Sergeant's mouth and grabbed her wrist before she could pull free the type-1 phaser tucked in her belt. "Listen, damnit." She snarled into the human woman's face. "I have neither the time nor the authorization to explain everything to you right now. If you want to save your unit and the lives of everyone in this godsforsaken city, you have got to trust that I'm here to help. Alright?"

Cunningham glowered at the Cardassian woman, but didn't argue. For some damned reason or another, she was buying into what Remmen told her. Well, she thought wryly, releasing her grip on the woman, maybe they aren't all inbred country bumpkin.

"Tek!" Tsvah's voice came in on her communicator. "The perimeter's secure. We've got spotters set up at every end of this block. We should have some sort of advanced notice if the spiners come this way again."

Remmen tapped her comm-badge. "Got it. Get back here. It's time to meet the natives."

  
  


***

2 Hours Later

Lieutenant Colonel Erik Starling was the kind of officer Remmen dreaded having to deal with. Stubborn, pigheaded, self-important, insufferable, and a backwater accent that drove her batty.

"Colonel, you've got to reinforce your forces in quadrant..." She checked the topographical map's markers briefly. "...five by nine by twelve. I'm telling you, the Jem'Hadar are gearing up for a second push at our flanks, and if we don't tighten up our lines, your men are gonna get ripped to smeg."

"Commander..." Starling drawled in that insufferable accent. Remmen had to fight the urge to clock the man one across the jaw. "I think we know what we're doing. The Jem'Hadar don't have the resources for another stab at our lines right now. The Mockingbird's bombing runs were quite thorough in that respect."

"The hell they were, Colonel." Remmen snapped back at him. "We've confirmed that at least five hundred of the troops the Dominion deployed down here managed to get clear before our bombers were even within range! It's even odds that they've got the ketracel white they need to sustain themselves for awhile, but if they don't, then they're going to be coming that much sooner and that much harder! You've got to tighten up your defenses, man!"

"Listen, Commander, I appreciate your help, but I'll be damned before I turn this command over to an inexperienced outsider."

"Inexperienced?! Are you daft, man?!" She jammed a finger at the three stripes slashed across the front of her blast-vest. "Do you think I got to be the Chief Tacco of a Sovereign-class bird by blind luck?!"

"I would have leaned towards political maneuvering myself, but whatever works for you." Starling shrugged and bent back to his notes as his aides snickered in the background.

"Political..?!" Remmen bit off the rest of that statement. She felt a hand settle on her shoulder. Looking behind her, she saw Heller shake his head slowly and deliberately. He then made a motion with the other hand, waving it open-palmed over the top of his head. Remmen smirked and nodded.

She reached up to the earpiece of her headset and tapped it on. "Remmen to Hazard Teams Gamma and Epsilon. Scramble to sectors four by seven by twelve through four by nine by twelve and lay down spotters."

Starling's gaze snapped up to meet hers, his eyes speaking volumes of the anger he was feeling. But Remmen knew that even this arrogant clout wouldn't dare undercut her authority on an open comm-line.

"Uh...roger that, C&C." Ensign Twilaaran Yolaani, the only Yallitian on-board the Mockingbird and the leader of Hazard Team Epsilon, responded.

"You want we should break out the doggos while we're at it, boss?" That was Lieutenant (jg) Troy Nehrun, Hazard Team Gamma's XO and the only human-Antican Remmen had ever meant.

"Yeah, better set up the doggo-nets just in case." Remmen responded, tacking off a series of keys on her padd and handing it off to Heller. "No sense being stupid."

"Then what the hell are we doing here? Nehrun, out." The headset beeped twice as both men signed off.

"Just what the hell was that, Cardi - Commander?" Starling snapped at her, catching himself a little too late to avoid the racial slur.

Remmen arched an eyeridge, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and the ice in her voice thickened. "That was me, saving your collective asses, backwater."

"Now listen here, you uppity little - " Starling stammered, jamming a beefy finger in her face.

"Commander!" One of the technicians, sitting at the communications terminal, hollered suddenly. "Checkpoint seventeen is reporting contact with enemy forces."

"Sonuvabitch!" Remmen snapped. "Where's checkpoint seventeen?"

"Sector five by nine by twelve, ma'am."

Remmen's gaze locked solely on Starling, her jaw setting into an 'I-told-you-so' snarl. She turned quickly back to the comm-tech, snatching up her phased compression rifle and checking its charge. "Tell Hazard Teams Alpha, Gamma and Epsilon to hump immediately to those coordinates, and for Eris' sake, keep the militia where they are. The last thing I want to do is leave an opening for the Jem'Hadar to waltz right on through."

Heller grabbed his gear and was getting ready to sling it when Remmen grabbed his arm and shook her head. Leaning in close, she whispered hurriedly to him. "Ride herd on our Colonel here. I'll back any decision you make, just don't let this jack-ass jeopardize our perimeter. See you in a bit." With those words, she was out the door, slinging on her gear as she ran at record-breaking speeds out of the bunker.

  
  


***

  
  


Tsvah didn't want to be here. He wanted to be back on the Mockingbird, watching intra-ship vids. Maybe something the on-board drama club had done, or something downloaded from OS-5 on their brief layover. Something. Anything but fighting for his life for people who remembered the Federation-Tzenkethie war too damned well.

The Jem'Hadar's blade, a double-edged knife about a half-foot long, whistled for his face for what felt the twentieth time. Tsvah ducked back, rocking back just far enough to feel the blade a centimeter from his left eye. It came down again, down the opposite trajectory it had come. Tsvah took a step back, regaining his footing and bracing himself. The Jem'Hadar lunged, stabbing at Tsvah's neck. Tsvah sidestepped, bringing his elbow up and smashing it into his assailant's temple. The damn spiney barely stumbled.

Tsvah didn't let the bastard get his footing before he drove his own hand-to-hand blades - a pair of nine-inch long wristblades housed within the forearm padding of his left arm - through the Jem'Hadar's shoulder. Twisting, he ripped downwards and tore almost half of the spiney's elbow out.

Tsvah didn't even get an agonized scream for his efforts.

In fact, the soldier recovered so fast that he caught Tsvah completely off-guard. The bastard's good fist hit Tsvah squarely in the nose. Swearing in any number of languages, Tsvah grabbed his face with his right hand, stumbling backwards as milk-white blood spooled from the shattered nose.

Tsvah reacted totally on instinct when the hand came up and around again. He grabbed the soldier by the wrist and punched his left hand clear through the Jem'Hadar's face, the blades erupting out the back of his head. Tsvah ripped his left hand clear, enjoying the brief exultation as the skull-plate came clear out with it.

That exultation was cut short, however, as a bayonet punched through his armor's midsection and sunk deeply into his rib-cage. With a surprised squawk, Tsvah stumbled forward, tripped on the fallen soldier's corpse, and went for a spill on his undamaged side. His vision blurred in pain, and he weakly looked up and over his shoulder for what the hell had just hit him. He barely saw the look of unvarnished hatred on the Jem'Hadar's face as he raised the disruptor rifle to firing level.

Tsvah blinked, eyes narrowing, his body still trying to overcome the shock of the sudden injury as he fought for the energy to do something. It proved unnecessary, however. Two bright blue flashes of phased disruption energy hit the spiney in the upper right shoulder and solar plexus, knocking him clear off his feet.

Blinking, Tsvah turned his head around to see who had just saved his ass. Salina Darren kneeled about twenty meters away, taking what cover she could from the corner of a building, weaving disruptor-fire into the attacking Jem'Hadar she could get a clear line of fire on. She yelled something at Tsvah that his ears couldn't comprehend about a half-second before he fell to the ground, unmoving.

  
  


***

  
  


The flat's of Remmen's palms hit the desk so hard, that the blood on her palms splattered over everything else on the desk. Coated in red, white, and purple blood, she started bellowing loud enough to make the pictures on the wall shake. "The next time I give you a frinxing suggestion, you miserable mehum sonuvabitch, you follow my instructions, or I'll have your balls strung up as a pair of pleasure beads!" She smacked Lt. Col. Starling smartly across the cheek, sticking her face in his and spraying spittle against that goofy mustache of his. "You got that, Colonel?!"

One of the first things they taught at StarFleet Academy's Psychology course was that you never, under any circumstances, meet anger with anger. It was stupid and never got anything accomplished. Much like hitting bone on bone in a bare-knuckles fight.

Obviously, Starling had never taken that course.

"Who the hell do you think you are, Cardie?!" He exploded, erupting from his chair and getting right back in Remmen's face. "What, you think that you can just waltz in here and take over this outfit just because you wear a StarFle - "

He never saw the right hook coming. One minute, he was misting his spittle in Remmen's face, the next he was on the floor, bleeding profusely from two cracked lips in three places.

Heller arched an eyebrow, but didn't interfere. Instead, he put a firm hand on the shoulder of Starling's 2I/C and held the young, petrified woman firmly rooted in place. She looked over at him with a mixture of confusion, anger, and a lot of barely-repressed terror. Heller just shook his head.

Remmen stepped coolly around the desk to stand above the cowering man she'd just slugged. "Lieutenant Colonel Starling, I am going to pretend you didn't say that. I am going to pretend that you did not just call me a StarFleet officer, when I am, and always have been, a loyal soldier of the Cardassian people. I neither have, nor do I wish to have, the sign 'puppet' spray-painted on my back in large, fluorescent letters. You jack-ass." She stepped over him and headed towards the door, her shoulders squared and her head held high. "You're relieved, Colonel. I'll not have an officer of your ineptitude sharing my command."

With that, she strode out, Heller falling into step beside her.

They were half-way down the corridor before Heller finally spoke up. "You enjoyed that."

"You're guldamned right I enjoyed that, Marcus." Remmen snapped, finally letting her posture relax slightly. "I've got thirteen dead and over fifty wounded people on the deck, and it's because that bastard was too damned prideful to take orders from a...woman."

Heller arched his brow slightly at her brief pause. His only response was, "ah."

  
  


They stepped into the military compound's command center, Remmen leading the way. She stepped up onto the command deck and turned to face the assembled officers trying to coordinate the battlefield's logistics. "May I have your attention, please." Remmen called, clasping her hands behind her back. All eyes turned to her, heads lifting upwards, only a very few of them narrowed suspiciously. "As of this time, zero-seven-thirty-one hours, I have relieved Lieutenant Colonel Erik Starling of command. Communications, please inform the Mockingbird and request they send a replacement as soon as possible. Until they arrive, I will serve in his place. That is all. Thank you."

Remmen turned to consult the battlefield display boards on the command deck's north and south corners, talking quietly with Heller concerning some minutiae or another. The first protest wasn't long in coming.

"Excuse me, sir..." One of the Lieutenants, a loud-mouthed favorite of Starling's named Svenn, piped up. "But how is it you have the authority to do that?"

Remmen turned to frown at the young upstart. "The Mockingbird has given me discretionary authority to do what I determine will keep the civilians under our charge alive. Lt. Col. Starling was acting in a manner contrary to that goal's completion."

"Horse hock. Sir. We see what you're trying to do here, Cardie. You're trying to -- "

"Aw, Jesus, Svenn, would you shut up?! She just saved our asses!" Another Lieutenant, a smart-ass Remmen liked named Mueller, interrupted.

"Damnit, Mueller, what're you trying to pu - "

Another officer, one Ensign Witt, interrupted him again. "You saw the same readouts we did, you bloody suck-up! Starling was leaving our entire western flank open for a smoker, asshole. Now pucker up and kiss it!"

And then Starling stumbled in, leaning on his lone, terrified aide and holding a handkerchief to his misshapen nose. He opened his mouth to say something, but the whine of a transporter interrupted him. 

Commander Tahna Fera appeared about a half-second later, trying to wipe the sleep from her eyes. "...of all the bloody times you hadda mutiny, you Cardassian assassin of..." Fera frowned, giving Starling a once-over. "What the hell happened to you?"

"That!" Starling jabbed a finger at Remmen, shaking it emphatically. "That...officer assaulted me! I demand you put her in irons this instant, Commander! This instant!"

Fera looked at him with an expression of utter deadpan. She looked up at Remmen, cocking an eyebrow. Remmen just shrugged as her only defense. Fera rolled her eyes and shook her head, turning back to Starling. She regarded him briefly for a moment before speaking. "Officer of the Deck!"

Sergeant Major Henry Owens stepped up. "Ma'am?"

"Get this man off my command deck."

Sergeant Owens never looked happier. "Yes, ma'am!"

  
  


***

  
  


"Hey. Sickle-head. Wakey wakey!"

Tsvah only grunted. It took a smart slap across the cheek before he opened his eyes groggily. "Wha..?" He drawled slowly, his lips moving slowly as his voice scratching.

Salina grinned down at him, waggling her eyebrows playfully. "Welcome back to the real-world, sleepy-head. We patched you up, made you all better now." She patted him on the head.

"My ribs hurt like hell."

Salina shrugged, putting her chins in her hands and looking at him from the side of the bio-bed. "You took a knife-wound to the back. Cut up one of your ribs and broke another, but they kept your heart in one piece. Nicked your secondary heart, though. One of the docs had to cut you open and make sure nothing was horribly wrong." She grinned perkily. "While they were in there, I had them tie up your tubes!"

"Tie up my..?" Tsvah squinted, looking at the ceiling and shaking his head slightly while a tube ran oxygen up into his nose. "That's women they do that to. Human women, at that."

"Don't muddy up a funny joke with details, Tsvah."

"But it wasn't funny."

Salina snorted, rolling her eyes. "Bet you were a real lady killer back in your hey-day, weren't you, Tsvah?"

Tsvah snorted. He winced, regretting it immediately. "Oh, yeah..." He grumbled, closing his eyes. "That was me. Always rolling in the poontang."

Salina snickered, leaning back in her chair and putting her feet up. "Hey, I heard that - "

"Salina?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you please shut the hell up."

  
  


***

  
  


"Status report from the planet, sir."

Sish looked up from his padd, glancing over at Nasan. "Hmm?"

"Status report from the planet, sir. Commander Tahna's reporting skirmishes throughout the northern city but that, for the moment, things are fairly under control. She's requesting some more doggo mines and...well, nevermind that." Nasan shrugged, trying to look busy.

Sish folded his padd under an arm and fixed Nasan with an amused look. "Nevermind what, Ensign?"

"Uh...just a sidenote on the transmission. Fera writes, and I quote, "If Commander Fasvah finally comes out from Breaker flight's blanket and wipes his nose, I won't complain." Apparently she wants to free up Breaker flight for something, sir."

"Mmm." Sish drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair briefly, frowning. "Probably a reconnaissance pass or two. Send a confirmation and ask her what she needs the fighters for."

"Roger, sir. Sending." Nasan replied. Several moments passed before the reply was forthcoming. "She sends back, 'smoker.' Whatever the hell that means."

Sish smirked and leaned back in his chair. "She wants to send Breaker flight on a seek-and-destroy mission, ferret out those last five-hundred troops."

"Oh...Commander Fasvah reports from New Johannesburg. Heavy fighting. He's still using Breaker wing, running them through scoot-and-shoots. Breaker flight reports that they're, quote, 'sick of this baby-sitting crap.' Sir."

The smirk spread. "Nice. Is the Rebel Yell equipped for atmospheric maneuvers?"

"Uh...let me ask, sir." Nasan looked side-long at her CO, not really wanting to know where he was going with this one. Her board beeped the reply a minute later. "Yes, sir, they report positive. Captain Yale would like to know what you're thinking, and if he has time to change his shorts before-hand."

That brought out a snicker. "Send a negative. And send to Commander Tahna that the Rebel Yell's all hers. Assuming she can ride herd on Yale's mouth."

"You want me to send that in full text, Captain?"

"Just send the message, Ensign."

  
  


***

  
  


Jason Yale absolutely hated atmospheric maneuvers in anything larger than a shuttlecraft. Currents, thermoclines, clouds, sluggish helms, and miscalculated torpedo firings.

That, and the first time he'd been on a controlled landing on-board an Intrepid-class starship, he'd vomited all over the toilet.

Shrugging, he eased into the Captain's chair and pressed so far back into it that his butt started to hurt. "All hands, this is the Captain. We're going to condition blue, rigging for atmospheric running. Vent warp plasma and secure all non-essential systems. Secure stealth systems and bring all Aegis systems online." He paused briefly, giving everyone a chance to comply.

"Engineering reports warp plasma vented, Captain." The helmsman said coolly. Yale blessed whatever gods he had pleased for the Vulcan Lieutenant who sat there.

"All hands report condition blue achieved, sir." The first officer, sitting at the bridge's lone science panel, reported.

"Helm, ahead one-quarter impulse. Engage."

It wasn't for a few moments that Yale started noticing the slow, uneven keel of the deck. Fighting down his bile, he once again reflected on just how much he hated atmospheric maneuvers.

  
  


***

  
  


"The Rebel Yell reports she's achieved station-keeping one-thousand feet above the city of Vasuda. She's receiving mission update from Detiula Installation...and moving off on standard search pattern. Captain Yale says that he's going to volunteer you next time Ensign Nasan's claws nee...hey! You guys have never had to hold me down and cut my claws! I'm gonna kill that no good sonuvamotherless - " Nasan started, glowering at her console. She looked around angrily at everyone else on the bridge. "Did any of you see that?!"

Vigorous head-shakes were her only response.

With a snort, Nasan turned back to her station, muttering. "When we get outta this, someone's gonna find his personal logs replaced with Vulcan romance novels."

Sish frowned at the padd in his hands while Nasan kept muttering to herself, consulting with the console on the arm of his chair. He checked back on the padd briefly, the frown deepening. "Computer, display current Infernal subspace conduit formations on the main viewer."

The main viewer snapped to life. The milky-way came up as a wire-frame, and a spider-web of purple lines began to glow brightly around the galaxy's circumference. "Computer, highlight our location." A yellow location dot lit up. "Computer, zoom in on our current location." The viewer zoomed in rapidly, a ticker in the far right corner lighting the magnification factor. "Stop. Computer, are these the most recent elint maps from fleet command?"

"Affirmative." The computer chimed back at him.

Sish frowned and tapped a finger against the side of his nose thoughtfully. "What are you slippery bastards up to...216-E, 271-G, 298-V...what's the pattern?" He shook his head, sighing and rubbing his eyes tiredly. "Computer, have there been any Infernal sightings reported in the past twenty-four hours?"

"Negative."

"Nowhere? Not even out near OS-59?"

"No sightings recorded."

Sish shook his head, frowning. "They press the offensive for two weeks straight, conducting hit-and-run strikes on signature territories, and then nothing..? No way..." He stood, dropping the padd on the arm of his chair. "Computer, display all data on Infernal attack patterns for the past two weeks, ranging from OS-3 to OS-30."

The viewscreen shifted outward again, and a pin-point of dots began lighting up from Cardassian space to the outer limits of Romulan space, encompassing three-thirds of the galaxy's diameter. Over twenty hit-and-fades, testing out the Division's deployments and defenses throughout the main signature Alpha and Beta-quadrant powers. 

Sish clasped his hands behind his back, looking for a pattern, eyes moving rapidly over the information scrolling past him as the computer began shifting from z-axis views to x-axis to y-axis and so on. It wasn't until the third pass on the x-axis that Sish finally found what he was looking for. Eyes widening in horror, he turned immediately to the Ops station. "Bring up all Setekh systems now, full intensity! Now!"

Seltra's head snapped around, her jaw falling open. "Captain?! We'll be lit up like the Aurora Borealis! Any Infie units in the vicinity are gonna home in on our signature like Nasan to catnip!"

"Hey!" Nasan shouted, indignant.

"Do it, damnit! Now!" Sish roared, drowning her out.

"Uh...aye, sir!" Belorian chanted nervously, exchanging a nervous glare with Seltra. He tapped the necessary keys and ran a quick systems-check before setting the systems on auto-repeat. The first two sweeps yielded nothing new.

It was on the third screen that the entire sector set itself ablaze.

Belorian squawked something untranslatable in his native tongue, jumping visibly in his chair and gripping his console tightly. "Subspace conduit formation, 954 by 200 by 15!"

"Where's the opening?" Nasan called over to him, cold-starting the weapons grid.

"Here!"

  
  


***

  
  


"Curious..." Fourth Marrik'a'clan grumbled from the bridge's tactical station.

First Omar'tik'lan overheard him and strode over to the station, peering over the man's shoulder. "What is curious, Fourth?"

"A moment ago, I was reading a single Federation signature with standard Sovereign-class specifications."

"A difficult challenge on the best of days. Have they received reinforcements somehow?" The First's eyes moved over the board, and a frown creased his face. "No, no reinforcements...but what is that?"

"Agreed, First. It is definitely a Sovereign-class vessel, but its signature has changed. It's as if they were using a subspace tunneling scanner that disrupted their IFF transponders."

"That's hardly a plausible assessment, Fourth."

The Fourth cocked his head slightly, frowning. "It is either that, First...or this is not a StarFleet ship, with technology years ahead of even our own."

The First's frown creased his face deeply, until the whole of it crinkled. "Continue observing. Upload all pertinent information into my viewer. I will inform the Vorta."

  
  


***

  
  


"Contact the Hiroona and Gray Lady, tell them to secure EMCON and rig for full war-mode. How's the Rebel Yell's sit-rep looking?" Sish roared, tacking commands into his arm-chair's panel.

Nasan checked her screen, grumbling to herself. "Un-productive, sir. They've got a mountain range west of the city limits that sensors are having a hard time getting through. It's slowing them down horribly."

"Gray Lady and Hiroona report full war-rigging complete. Aegis systems are up and tracking in standard tri-static patterns, sir!" The young woman manning the Science II/Tactical II station called from across the bridge.

Sish mulled on the information briefly, running every option he could fathom through his mind. Finally, he shook his head and made his decision. "Order the Rebel Yell to begin rapid ascent maneuvers. I want her up here in case those - "

"Subspace node opening in grid seventy-by-twenty-by-five-hundred!" Nasan interrupted, her blood turning to ice. "Reading...great Horned God...four fighter wings, a Beleth-class guided missile cruiser and a Lucifer-class beam frigate flying heavy escort for a Gre'thor-class destroyer! Infernal Battle Group emerging from subspace inter-folds!"

  
  


***

  
  


The physics behind inter-fold jump drive technology were complicated, even on the best of days. The basic principle behind it held that a specific type of energy was focused on prying open a specific intersection between subspace and real space, and opening it large enough for whatever you needed moved. Once inside the inter-fold nodes, you entered a pocket of existence that was neither subspace nor real space, but an inter-fold layer between the two. There were some patches of the inter-folds that were dangerously unstable, creating huge rifts and eddies in both subspace and real-space. But the majority of the inter-fold was clear.

Randomly opening inter-fold nodes had been charted at various points all throughout the galaxy, and had been deemed hazards to space-faring civilization. However, what all parties concerned failed to realize was that the inter-fold layer, if charted and used properly, could be used as a means of transportation far more expedient, efficient, and damaging than warp drive. A distance normally covered in two weeks by a ship traveling at warp nine could be covered in an hour.

Inter-fold jump drive technology was a system so far beyond even the Omega Division's understanding, that the majority of Division scientists had simply given up.

The first wing of Infernal Mara-class fighters erupted from the blue swirl of energy a full second after it erupted into existence near Beta Cygni. Looking like they'd come straight out of hell, they accelerated forward at break-neck speeds as both the cruiser and frigate jumped in. Where the cruiser was huge, slotted with close to a dozen ready- and rapid-fire torpedo and missile tubes, the frigate was sleek and stream-lined, bristling with two-dozen offensive and defensive disruptor arrays. With them came the next two wings of fighters, Cain- and Ravanok-class, respectively.

The true behemoth, the Gre'thor-class destroyer, rumbled out of it's own inter-fold node, flanked by the final wing of fighters, flying Dragon-class space superiority fighters. Easily twice-and-a-half the size of the cruiser, it wielded half-a-dozen torpedo tubes, a dozen phased-pulse and disruptor arrays, and a pair of heavy anti-shipping beams that could carve a D'deridex-class cruiser in half with a modicum of effort.

Streamlined, black-hued hulls moved effortlessly through space, engines rumbling silently against the backdrop of space. Armed and primed for battle, the Infernal Battle Group moved to secure it's objectives.

  
  


***

  
  


Fourth Marrik'a'clan gripped the sides of his console, feeling suddenly very dizzy as he looked at what his sensor's board told him. "In the Founders' names...FIRST!"

  
  


***

  
  


"Captain, we've got trouble!"

Sish's head spun around to give Nasan an incredulous stare. "Really, Ensign! You just now noticed this?!"

"Not the Infies, sir! A Jem'Hadar cruiser wing just entered sensor range! Reading three heavy cruisers, eight full wings of fighters, and two troop transports!" Nasan spat, glowering at him.

Sish stared at her incredulously, his jaw hanging open. "ETA?!"

"I'd give them forty minutes to intercept. Fifty to get those troops transports in place."

"Perfect. Abso-frinxing-lutely perfect." Sish paused briefly, thinking. He sighed, shaking his head. "I don't have the ships to spare. Send out a general distress call and sector-wide alert to all Division ships in the area, let them know what's going on. And get me a targeting solution on that Gre'thor!"

  
  


***

  
  


The two fleets collided head-on in normal-space. The Rebel Yell swept forward, pulse cannons blowing a hole through the first Mara the instant it came into firing range. The rest of the Infernal wing scattered, pulling out on impossibly tight vectors.

What the Infernal military had in speed and numbers, it was sorely lacking in weapons and shielding technology. Infernal weapons were substandard by Division standards, as was their energy shielding tech. While vastly superior to anything wielded by StarFleet, the Dominion, the Romulans, or anyone else short of the Grigari and Borg, they were about two steps behind the Division in that respect.

However, what they lacked there, they made up for with staggering numbers.

The three Maras moved in behind the Rebel Yell, launching trebuchet and anti-fighter swarm missiles, lancing fire across her bow with phased disruptor cannons. The Rebel Yell rocked under the long-range, high-payload trebuchet rounds, cutting in her impulse drives and diving away. The Maras dove after her, only to run head-on into the mines the Rebel Yell had dropped from her aft torpedo tubes. Space lit up like a fireball around the three fighters, consuming them in it's blaze. A few seconds later, their shattered hulks drifted out of the killing zone, dead systems sparking in futile protest.

The Rebel Yell swooped up and around as the Ravanok-class frigate tried to lock its weapons onto the smaller escort. The Rebel Yell jinked and juked as bright white streamers of weapons-fire licked at the space around it, occasionally striking glancing blows off its shields.

The Hiroona, meanwhile, exchanged heavy broad-sides with the Cain guided missile cruiser. Pin-point blasts of concentrated phaser and disruptor-fire chewed into the Cain's shields, striking deeply at the torpedo tubes before they could be brought to bear. Too late, the tube-bay doors snapped open, and immediately dumb-fire rockets with no homing capability but heavy warheads streaked out in huge droves. The Hiroona swooped and dove, but the sheer clustering of rockets and, moments later, anti-shipping missiles overwhelmed her.

  
  


***

  
  


"Holy Eris..." Sish breathed as his eyes locked on the viewscreen. "The Hiroona..."

"She's listing, sir. Sensors report damage to her weapons grid...hell, damage to everything. She's launching pods now, sir, but..." Nasan shook her head sadly.

"Ensign, I want that cruiser's ass nailed to the bulkhead. Fire as you bear."

"I love it when you talk dirty. Sir."

  
  


***

  
  


Eight quantum torpedoes, followed promptly by four more, hit the Beleth so hard and so fast that she didn't even have a chance. The Mockingbird pitched forward in a head-long dive, phasers and torpedo tubes blazing red and blue fire that carved dozens of holes and caverns into the cruiser's chassis. Her shields long since obliterated, the cruiser succumbed before she could even reload her missile and torpedo bays. Huge rifts appeared in her armor, and various sections of hull were carved away. One of the streaks of phaser-fire finally struck a torpedo-rack near the Infernal cruiser's aft quarter. The ammunitions-store erupted brilliantly, taking half of the ship with it. Dead in space, the Cain listed away, caught in the clutches of the gas-giant it hovered near.

The Gray Lady had somehow found herself embroiled in the middle of a pitched battle, involving her, the Rebel Yell, three wings of Infernal fighters, Breaker flight, and the Ravanok frigate that had been pursuing the Rebel Yell only moments before. Phasers and torpedoes lit up space in a deadly display of pyrotechnics. Breaker flight, low on ammunition and piloted by tired officers, did everything they could to cover the Gray Lady, keeping the Vulture fighter/bomber wing occupied while the frigate exchanged broadsides with the Ravanok. Explosions lit the sky as shields failed and engines exploded, hurling hapless pilots into oblivion. Breaker four exploded, the victim of a Dragon, which promptly fell under the Rebel Yell's expert marksmanship.

And then the Gre'thor entered the fray.

  
  


***

  
  


One minute, Nasan had been focused intently on her screens. The next minute, her face was colliding with those screens. The entire bridge pitched and yawed, throwing everyone to the deck. Nasan blacked out for an interminable time, blinking hard when she finally did get back on her feet. 

Around her, she saw hell.

Kalnerian, over at the secondary Ops console, lay flat on her back, bleeding profusely from shrapnel wounds, courtesy of her blown-out console. Two crewmen had been blown clear away from their consoles, over the command deck's safety railing, and onto the lower command deck itself. Two large pools of blood beneath them signaled to her that they weren't going to be getting up for quite a while. Belorian was dragging himself back towards his console, obviously favoring his left hand. Seltra had, somehow, managed to stay in her seat, while Sish was sprawled out in the small walkway between the viewscreen and the Ops/Conn stations. Struggling to his elbows, and from there onto his knees, he leaned against the Conn console, nursing a large gash across his forehead and one hell of a shiner.

Consoles flickered, and overhead support struts creaked. A few moments passed, and suddenly a crossbeam split from the ceiling and landed with a heavy clang on the command deck, flattening the Captain's, CO's, and XO's chairs under it.

"Aw, damnit!" Sish grumbled, frowning and looking through crossed eyes at the wreckage. "Those silly sons of - would somebody like to tell me what the hell just hit us?!"

"I would guess the Gre'thor." Seltra said matter-of-factly, eyes flying over her console. "Looks like they got range on us."

"Wonderful." Sish growled, looking over at Belorian. "Damage..?"

"Believe it or not, sir..." Belorian growled, shaking out his left hand as the right flew over his screens. "The shields absorbed most of the blasts. We've got hull breaches on eight decks, centered around deck twenty-four. I'd say we got damned lucky, sir."

"Great. Casualties?"

"That's...where we didn't get so lucky, sir. My boards show over a hundred missing or dead, and close to fifty injured. Lazarus systems are engaged, and emergency forcefields are keeping everything buttoned down for now."

"Swell..." Sish grumbled, pushing up to his feet. "Tactical..?"

It took Nasan a moment to figure out Sish was asking her. She finally sprang to her feet, looking around frantically. "What? Huh?!"

"Report, Ensign!" Sish snapped, harsher than he'd intended.

Nasan blinked before looking down at her boards. "Shields were knocked off-line...Lazarus systems have rerouted to tertiary shield matrices. Adaptation circuitry is offline, however, all torpedo tubes and most phaser arrays are on-line." She frowned at a blinking light on her console. "Oh, hell - incoming torpe - "

The five thermite torpedoes struck the Mockingbird's weakened shields and released their charges, rocking the ship.

"Goddamnit!" Sish roared, pushing up to his feet. "Nasan, get that destroyer outta my sky!"

"Sir?!"

"The tri-cobalts, damnit!"

"Oh! Right! Aye, sir!"

  
  


***

  
  


Tri-thorium cobalt torpedoes were the crowning achievement of StarFleet's research into heavy anti-shipping weapons. A mixture of quantum, photon, and quantum-filament technologies, they were capable of yielding blasts of close to four-hundred-thousand isotons. A ship armed with tri-cobalt weaponry was considered a Class A threat to any non-StarFleet ships, for the simple reason that they were capable of tearing holes in subspace.

The Mockingbird was armed with five tri-cobalt torpedoes. As the Mockingbird turned, looking altogether wounded, her scored and burned hull glinting in sunlight, all four of her torpedo tubes fired simultaneously. The Gre'thor, its energy systems drained by the anti-shipping beams, tried to pull away, its forward defensive disruptor arrays spitting fire out futilely. The first two tri-cobalt torpedoes went right through the forward defense grid as though it weren't there, exploding against the massive destroyer's shields. The shields flashed briefly in opposition before buckling horribly, backlashing against the destroyer's hull. The destroyer reeled, thrown off its axis, its defensive systems dazed and confused. The two remaining torpedoes streaked in, punching right through what remained of the shields and impacting against the ship's chassis. The explosion was both extraordinarily beautiful, but, at the same time, almost heartrending. The destroyer, or, rather, what remained of it, cracked like an egg. Its port quarter consumed itself in fire, while the forward and aft sections drifted away from each other, fires erupting and blazing all throughout the whole of the debris.

And then the bodies followed.

  
  


***

  
  


Belnorian looked like he was about to be sick. He had to rip his eyes away from the slaughter on the screen, had to remind himself that the Infies had started the war. It didn't do any good, as, on-screen, their bodies floated out into space by the dozens; by the hundreds.

Sish stood behind them, on what remained of the command deck, one hand clenched behind his back, the other balled into an angry fist at his side. "Helm, bring us about to engage the..."

"Sir, Gray Lady reports situation is clear."

"What?!" Sish's head snapped around, his jaw hanging slightly open. "Nasan, this is no time for that damn sense of humor of - "

Nasan snorted derisively. "I'm not kidding, sir."

Sish, blinking hard, shook his head and turned back to the viewscreen. "Alright. Power down the shields and let them recharge. Helm, turn about and prepare to engage Jem'Hadar destroyer wing. Tactical, reload all torpedo tubes. Sish to Engineering!"

The reply came back with a tone that was somewhat less than formal. "What the hell did you crazy sons of bitches do to my ship?!" Gray yelled over the comlink.

  
  


***

  
  


Remmen couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her commanding officer and lover so furious. It hardly helped matters that Remmen herself was so angry, tired, and frustrated, that she was one step shy of full blown hysterics. Even Heller had let his emotions slip from him long enough to bellow an enraged question upon first hearing the news.

Five men now sat, dejected and angry - either at themselves, or at someone else, but most definitely because they'd gotten caught - in the brig. Fera was screaming in her native Bajoran tongue, too angry to even think straight enough to translate her words into English. It didn't matter, thankfully, as the universal translator built into the comm-badge took care of it easily.

Heller was the only one paying enough attention to notice when Salina entered the brig, running a hand through her dark brown purple-streaked hair. Her manner was somewhat tired, but her eyes burned with a cold fury that Heller found scared the hell out of him. She shook her head once, giving Heller all the confirmation he needed.

He turned back to look at Commander Fera, who had paused long enough to take a deep breath before starting in on another string of obscenities that cursed not only the men in the cell to the fire caverns of the Pah'Wraiths, but every man on the planet, and pretty much just every man who'd ever committed the sin of being born.

Had he not been so angry, Heller might have found it amusing.

The men in the cell had, of course, violated the rules of civilized warfare, as defined by any number of historical treatises. Worse, they had done it to those under their charge.

They'd ambushed and raped three young women, two within inches of their lives. And, of course, with the Mockingbird and the fleet out of contact, they couldn't get them access to the proper medical care they required.

Fera finally finished her tirade, either out of profanities or out of breath, Heller didn't know which. Finally, with just a final dismissive wave of her hand, she roared out the following two words; "Do it."

That said, she promptly grabbed Salina by the upper arm and dragged her out of the room, while Remmen, Heller, Kreul, and another Klingon Hazard Team officer, off the Hiroona, each drew blades of varying lengths and sizes from their scabbards and stepped into the individual cells.

It was remarked later that the screams could be heard all throughout the Detiula military installation.

  
  


***

  
  


"Shields have recharged, Captain." Nasan reported unsteadily from her station. "Lazarus systems have begun repairing damage to primary and secondary shield grids, but, until they're done..." She shook her head slowly. "All adaptation matrices are offline, sir. When the tertiary grids fail..."

She didn't have to finish.

Silence hung palpable on the bridge for several long minutes, before anyone dared speak again.

"And the rest of the fleet..?" Sish finally asked, voice barely a hoarse whisper.

From the Tactical II station, a young, baby-faced Ensign who was more terrified at that moment than at any other moment of his life, responded shakily. "The Hiroona is down and out. The Gray Lady is still taking on survivors. The Rebel Yell reports that her adaptation and Lazarus systems are shot to hell, and she's got damage on two decks. Breaker wing is down one fighter, and Breaker Two is reporting damage to her...wait...damnit! Breaker Two is peeling away..." The Ensign's fist hit his console. And again, and again. "Goddamned Infies!" He swore, squeezing his eyes shut. "Breaker Two is gone, sir. Ensign Germaine is dead."

Sish closed his eyes and breathed deeply, pursing his lips and blowing air unsteadily out between them. "And the Gray Lady..?"

"Damage to her outer hull, and she's had to switch over to her secondary shield matrix. However, she reports that she is still ready and willing for all manners of bear, sir."

Sish snorted. "She's the only one..." He muttered under his breath. "Reinforcements..?"

Now Nasan spoke up. "The Prang is on her return trip from OS-5. ETA, twenty-nine minutes. The heavy cruiser Thoth and the carrier Galatea are riding her trails. Estimate forty-one minutes 'till they're in range."

Sish shook his head slowly. All ships damaged, no fighter screen, the Mockingbird scored and hulled badly, no energy-adaptation technology to repel the Jem'Hadar's weapons, the Rebel Yell in worse shape, Breaker flight halved and hurting, and the Gray Lady still picking up survivors from the Hiroona...

They were, in a word, screwed. Left, right, up, down, and over. They were absolutely screwed.

Nine-hundred on the Mockingbird, fifty on the Rebel Yell, five-hundred on the Gray Lady. And three million civilians, caught in the crossfire.

"Reel in Breaker flight. Tell them to rearm and repair what they can in five minutes, and then launch. Mockingbird to Rebel Yell."

"This is the Rebel Yell." Yale responded with what sounded like a voice of infinite sadness. The man had just lost almost half his crew; Sish knew how he felt. "Give me some good news, Mockingbird."

"Afraid I can't oblige, Captain." Sish responded, trying his best to sound gung-ho and sure of himself. "That fleet, and its troop transports, are going to make planet-fall within twenty minutes if we don't move to intercept."

No response. No cry of protest that they were outnumbered and outgunned. No pleading for sanity. Yale understood what was on the line, and he'd steeled himself against what he knew might be asked of him.

Sish's respect for the man increased ten-fold.

"Breaker flight is coming in for a quick rearm and repair. When they're finished, they'll launch and form up on you. Your job is to fight your way past those fighter screens and take out those transports before they're within range of the planet. Gray Lady, are you listening?"

"When aren't we, Captain. Pulling in the last of the Hiroona's pods now, and then we'll be on your wing."

"Glad to hear it, Gray Lady. Our job is going to be to get past those fighters and clear a path for the Rebel Yell and the fighters. Don't forget that those destroyers carry two columns of troops each, so we'll need to take them out fast as well."

"Understood, Mockingbird. Recharging phaser couplings now."

Sish closed his eyes briefly. "Captain Vargas...the Gray Lady is the healthiest ship we have in this system until the Prang and Thoth arrive. If something should happen to us..."

"I read you, Captain. Baby-sitting civvies may not have been in the job description, but it's what we were trained for. Ego ire timere deos quo calcere. Gray Lady, out."

Sish smiled warmly, nodding ever-so slightly, despite the fact that no one saw it.

Belorian turned in his chair slightly, looking over his shoulder at Sish. "Sir..? What did he say?"

Sish smirked, shaking his head slightly. "It was Latin, Gatto. It's the motto of the United Federation of Planets' Civilian Defense Corps."

Belorian's frown deepened. "What's it mean, sir?"

"'I walk where the gods fear to tread.'"

  
  


***

  
  


They moved out, five ships, moving against the blackness of space, swooping together in formation, off to pick a fight with a fleet more than four times their size.

  
  


***

  
  


"Hail those bastards, Ensign." Sish snarled, hands clasped tightly behind his back.

"Aye, sir. Hailing frequencies open."

Sish straightened his posture noticeably and jutted his chin upwards defiantly. "This is Captain Sish Baakani of the Omega Division Destroyer Mockingbird to approaching Jem'Hadar ships. You are in violation of Omega Division space, and are thus ordered to withdraw. If you do not heave to at once, we will open fire."

The reply wasn't long in coming. The image of the three heavy cruisers, two full fighter squadrons, and two troop transports on the main viewer was suddenly replaced with a somewhat less appealing view. An oily Vorta man and a fairly grotesque looking Jem'Hadar appeared on the screen, wearing some sort of crazy eyepieces over their left eyes. "Ah, Captain Baakani..." The Vorta oozed. "I'm afraid I don't recognize your government's legitimacy in this system. However, I do believe this is the first time the Dominion has had relations with that government..."

"...and unless you want it to end in a bloodbath, I suggest you withdraw. By refusing a direct order from an Omega Division command-level officer, you are in violation of Omega Doctrine, of which the Cardassian Union is a signature member." Sish snapped, his patience at an end. "Beta Cygni is under my protection. Those three million civilians are not going to get chalked up on the rifles of your Jem'Hadar pets." Sish spat, eyes narrowing dangerously. "If you don't wish to waste those three cruisers, get the hell out of my space."

"Captain Baakani, I sincerely hope that we can be reasonable about this." The Vorta drawled. "Please understand that we want nothing more than to bring order to - "

Sish snorted and turned to face Nasan. "Get that gene-trash out of my sight."

Nasan closed the channel instantly, all too eager to follow her Captain's instructions.

"Mockingbird to tactical squadron...follow us in."

  
  


***

  
  


The Mockingbird wielded an impressive array of twelve phaser arrays of various size and power. But while an ordinary Sovereign-class vessel would have been fitted with typical StarFleet weaponry, the Mockingbird was decades ahead of anything StarFleet had. So when the six Jem'Hadar fighters moved in on the Mockingbird's forward screens, disruptors blazing away, the Mockingbird responded with conservative half-second shots from the forward arrays.

At first, the fighters' screens held against the onslaught. But they crumpled within a fraction of a second, and the red-white beams of energy hulled four of the ships within two seconds. The tactical squadron, surprised into disarray, peeled away...right into the Gray Lady's path. Where the Mockingbird was a destroyer, fitted to take on most anything, the New Orleans-class beam frigate was designed strictly as an anti-fighter screen. She chewed the remaining two fighters into pieces within seconds.

Six down, eighteen to go.

  
  


***

  
  


The Mockingbird rocked under Sish's feet as the Jem'Hadar cruisers entered the fray, as did the remaining eighteen fighters at their disposal.

"Tactical, target the lead destroyer!" Sish roared over the din of red alert.

"Targeting, aye! Locked and cocked!"

"Fire! Helm, keep us moving, don't let those cruisers get range on us..!"

Too late. Full torpedo spreads erupted from the cruisers at the same time that the Mockingbird had launched her torpedoes. The lead cruiser tried to pull away, but succumbed. Six quantum torpedoes lanced into it, disabling its forward screens and plowing into its underbelly. The temporal shielding on the torpedoes had been disabled, as they were part of the vaunted adaptation technology that the Mockingbird was now sorely lacking.

Nevertheless, the torpedoes did their jobs. The cruiser crumpled in on itself, a burning hulk.

But the Mockingbird hardly escaped unscathed. While the Gray Lady and Rebel Yell were embroiled in the middle of a fierce shoot-out with the eighteen remaining Jem'Hadar fighters, the Mockingbird's screens roared against, but inevitably crumbled, under the hail of torpedoes thrown at them. The bridge exploded in color and light. Belorian was thrown clear of his station, and the viewscreen erupted in a shower of sparks and shrapnel, pelting both Seltra and Sish with superheated shards.

Nasan's console exploded from the inside out, sending debris and shrapnel into her face. She flew backwards, the superheated shards of duraplastic punching clear through her chest, head and neck, killing her instantly.

Power flickered, then returned in excessive quantities, briefly blinding those left alive or conscious.

And they numbered very, very few.

  
  


***

  
  


The Rebel Yell burned from three different breaches, but she kept going. Her torpedo tubes roared, her phasers sang, and the troop transports suffered.

Breaker Three died, sending himself to kamikaze a Jem'Hadar fighter.

Breaker One kept going, phasers running dry, fuel almost out, screens almost down, five Jem'Hadar fighters on her tail. She died a few moments later, blown to bits before she could ram the troop transport she'd been angling for.

Gray Lady roared, cannons pumping, punishing each and every Jem'Hadar on the battlefield. But she paid herself. Three fighters came in at once at her port-dorsal quarter, while the phasers in that quadrant were recharging. They streaked in, their weapons running cold, but their engines pushing well past their safe limits. Gray Lady's arrays recharged, and were able to knock down two of them. But the gunner slipped, and missed the third. He went right through the Gray Lady's shields and collided with her. Both of the Gray Lady's nacelles were sheared off under the impact, and her warp core, under the sudden pressure, lost its containment and breached. The beam-frigate erupted, its shockwave taking out three more fighters as it went.

And the Mockingbird burned, her engines dead, her shields sputtering pathetically as the Jem'Hadar heavy cruisers moved in for the kill.

  
  


***

  
  


Someone coughed. Gatto didn't know who, but at least now he knew he wasn't the only one left. Hauling himself back to his console, he coughed out for someone, anyone, to sound off. Seltra, beside him and somehow still moving the Mockingbird through a gut-churning series of evasives while the ship tried desperately to keep herself together.

Thaff didn't respond orally. The poor bastard was huddled up just in front of the command deck, his refrigeration suit blackened and smoldering, clawing desperately at the release catches to his helmet. He finally pulled the thing off his head and dropped-threw it several meters, falling to his hands and vomiting loudly. He promptly passed out, his head falling with a sickening splut into his own bile.

Gatto panned around briefly, looking for Sish, his eyes wide and panicked when he didn't immediately find him. And then he did.

Sish had been thrown clear over the wreckage of the command deck by the viewscreen's explosion. He now lay in a pile of his own blood just beyond the command deck, obviously down and out for a good while.

Gatto and Seltra shared a brief look before Seltra directed her eyes back down to her board. "Guess that means you're in command." She grumbled grudgingly.

Gatto gulped deeply just before the Mockingbird rocked as yet another pair of disruptor bolts chewed into what meager shields she had left, scoring deep lines into the ship's hull. With a hiss, Gatto checked his board before transferring tactical controls to his secondary console, frowning angrily as the two remaining heavy cruisers, four remaining fighters, and the Rebel Yell came up on his screen.

"Torpedo tubes are jammed, and at least half of the phaser arrays are shot to hell. Everything in the saucer is gone..." He shot her a wry smirk. "Don't suppose you'd mind showing those bastards a little thruster..?"

  
  


***

  
  


The Rebel Yell unloaded the last of its torpedoes, and there was an audible Kun-CHUNK as the torpedo bays slammed closed.

"Rear batteries, do we have any juice left?" Yale roared to his tactical officer.

"Not much, sir."

"Well, damnit, get at least one of those fighters off our tail! Mines, torpedoes, forward batteries, anything?"

His first officer, over at Tactical II, shook his head gravely.

"Wonderful." Yale snarled, leaning forward in his chair. "Did we get both of those transports?" That earned him a nod in the affirmative. "There's that at least. Bridge to Engineering, how soon can you get those phaser coils reloaded?"

"Sir?!" The rather rushed and hectic response came back. "Are you out of your mind?! We'd have to put over at drydock before I'd even consider trying it! And I certainly wouldn't risk a dry-swap in the middle of a combat zone!"

"Do we have any - " The bridge rocked, and the whole ship pitched forward as the last remaining fighter dogged the Rebel Yell's tail, spitting fire viciously at the ship, trying to punish it for what it had done to the once-mighty Jem'Hadar battle wing. He shook his head viciously. "Does anyone have any ideas?!"

No one said anything. No one had a damned thing to suggest. The ship rocked again, and his tactical officer swore loudly at what his console told him. "Sir, all screens are down! We're exposed!"

Silence hung so palpable on the bridge, that Yale knew he could taste it if he so chose. No one needed to say anything. There was nothing to be done. Weapons were gone. They couldn't go to warp or transwarp, and they couldn't run.

So Yale took the only course open to him.

"Saltek...drop the emergency destruct log buoy." He said to the helm officer, his voice almost a whisper, yet thunderous across the bridge. "Emergency braking thrusters in seven seconds."

  
  


***

  
  


"Got him!" Gatto whooped as yet another console exploded in protest, at the rear of the bridge. "Cruiser number two is flaming out and - " He didn't get the rest out, as the bridge rocked again, throwing both he and Seltra flat up against their consoles. The air exploded from their lungs, and the fire suppression sputtered, then died.

It took Gatto precious moments to reorient himself and refocus on his console, gulping down his bile. "Thrusters, warp, and transwarp drives are gone...we've got fires on...Eris, all decks..." He looked briefly over at Seltra, frowning. "In case I never get another chance to say this, Selt..."

"Don't." Seltra grumbled, blinking away spots in front of her eyes. "Knowing our luck, we'll live through this and then we'll have to do something about it."

Gatto smirked dully. He turned his eyes back to his console...and frowned. And then he was up out of his chair, pumping his fists into the air and whooping like an idiot.

  
  


***

  
  


The Prang made its presence known the instant it hit normal space, modal wings drooping down to their attack positions. Her forward disruptors blazed repeatedly, the quantum-phased energy going right through the nearest cruiser's shields - or rather, what remained of them - and slicing its hull to pieces. Bulkheads exploded and shrapnel flew to the sky, the occasional body floating, flailing, from a rip in the ship's side. The cruiser, already turning to retreat, listed badly.

The remaining healthy cruiser didn't even see it coming. One minute, her sister cruiser was turning to withdraw, the next, the two huge warships collided. The explosion was horrendous. The two ships carved each other in half. Debris flew, and people died.

The Prang swept into the remaining Jem'Hadar fighters, taking two of them down with a pair of well-placed torpedoes, dispatching the others with typical Klingon ferocity.

  
  


***

  
  


The Mockingbird floated, looking for all the world like a lame duck, in orbit of Beta Cygni's only moon, Ignatz. She was thoroughly hulled, through-and-through in some places, and was mostly uninhabitable. Most of her painting was stripped and blackened from weapons-fire, and deck twelve was still on fire.

The Andromeda-class carrier Galatea sat in station keeping next to her, worker bee crews moving between the two ships while three full squadrons of fighters kept watch. Both the Thoth and the Prang ran EMCON, cloaked and hidden in orbit of the planet.

  
  


***

  
  


The Galatea's senior officer, a grizzled and self-admitted battleaxe by the name of Admiral Joyaathi Salla, stood with her back to her guest, staring out her viewport.

She turned slowly, fixing that same occupant with a gaze that had caused lesser men to soil themselves in no time flat. "I've received the after-action reports of your officers, and the repair estimates from the Galatea's own repair teams. The Mockingbird, Captain..." She eased into her chair, glowering darkly at Sish. "...is a dead stick."

Sish's heart plummeted into his colon. He slouched visibly, running a single talon contemplatively along the huge gash running from his temple to his jawline. "Her crew..?"

Salla's eyebrow went up slightly. "I've not relieved you of your command, Captain. Such as it is. They are, what is left of them, still yours."

Sish simply met her gaze, his features gaunt and haunted.

Salla sighed sympathetically. "The reports from sickbay aren't favorable. My CMO has confirmed at least seven hundred dead, and another hundred missing and presumed dead."

Sish squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to wrap his brain around the number, but it kept slipping from his mind. Eight hundred men and women...eight hundred people who'd trusted him to keep them safe...

Salla continued, her gaze a wizened mask of quiet fury. "The Rebel Yell, Hiroona, and Gray Lady have all been destroyed. All hands lost. The Mockingbird will be down for quite some time, at least until her Lazarus systems have been completely replaced."

"What about..." Sish began, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again, scratching at his eyes. "What about the civilians..?"

Salla inhaled deeply, glaring quietly at him. "I don't pretend to understand why you've done what you've done, Captain. You've violated stealth doctrine, the Omega Charter, standing protocol, and you've certainly pissed in enough pools. But I'll say this for you and your people; you've got balls. And you're good at what you do." The corner of her lip twitched ever-so slightly. "We've begun evacuating civilians. The Galatea's fighter squadrons have been harassing the Jem'Hadar ever since they got here. Last counts put the number of surviving colonists at two million, nine-hundred seventy thousand. Congratulations, Captain." Salla's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Because of you, only thirty-thousand people died."

"Only." Sish snarled darkly. "Only thirty-thousand. I'll be sure to write this down, Admiral."

"Stick it, Captain." Salla snapped. "You saved the lives of almost three million men, women and children. The largest colony in the former demilitarized zone owes its continued existence to you."

"I'll be sure to mention that to the orphans we're presently evacuating, Admiral."

Salla smirked. "Actually, Sish, if I'd been in your shoes, all three million of those backwaters would've burned."

That simple truth seemed to make Sish sink further in his seat. He looked...shamed, though Salla could scarcely understand why.

She barreled on, regardless. "You'll have to stand before a board of inquiry for this one, but..." She shrugged, leaning back in her chair. "...you probably did the right thing."

There was a brief pause while the two stewed, wrapped up in their various thoughts.

"Now get out of my office."


End file.
